Hole? In Soho? It’s more likely than you think!

It’s difficult to know where to even begin reviewing a show like HOLE!, the new musical offering from Jake Brasch and Nadja Leonhard-Hooper, aka American Sing-Song. Set in a world in which anyone whose… well, whose hole is not permanently plugged is seemingly raptured in an ongoing event known as the Great Sucking, the show follows two teenage boys - Luke and Connor - who, on the instructions of Luke’s pastor father and the leader of the cult in which the boys have grown up, must venture to Cincinatti (or Cincidaddy, as it is later christened) to remove the plugs from a group of “sinners” so that they can be raptured as God intends. Only by doing this, the pastor claims, can the Great Sucking finally end and peace (and anal freedom) be restored to those who have been saved.

A tale of religious zealotry and gay awakening told through a series of hilarious songs (in which, for example, “anus” is rhymed with “heinous” and “devastation” with “ejaculation”), HOLE! blends ludicrous storytelling with genuine sincerity. Brasch and Leonhard-Hooper, who both write and perform all of the songs and music, as well as the myriad characters who populate this world of buttplugs and extraordinarily complicated defecation rituals, are adept at using heightened comedy and absurdist poetry to tell a genuinely heartfelt story of two boys discovering who they are and how they feel about each other, lightly ribbing but never mocking them. The quest, which takes the two twinks to the hotbed of bears, anal and fetish culture that is Soho Cincinatti, serves as a metaphor for an elongated and inevitable coming out, all as the boys discover that having one's hole filled can do so much than merely avert annihilation at the hands of a vengeful and apparently kinky overlord.

It's in the unapologetic queer silliness of the concept and the narrative that HOLE! thrives. Brasch and Leonhard-Hooper sell the story and its characters with the utmost conviction, which in turn elevates the joyous and gleefully daft milieu that they establish from the start with their glorious costumes and wigs. Surrounded on three sides by a series of instruments and props that serve as practical sound effects, they are consummate showpeople who use all of the tricks at their disposal to create an experience that feels improvised but is tightly rehearsed and carefully constructed. Yet there's a looseness and a sense of chaos to it all too, that puts the audience at ease and helps them to surrender to the madness unfolding on stage. Indeed, an unexpected show stop caused by a broken mic at this particular performance was handled with playful aplomb by the pair, demonstrating their adaptability and natural ability to hold a room in the palm of their hands.

There's something of Bourgeois and Maurice to American Sing-Song, not just in their lyricism but also in how they interact with one another and in their wry humour. As such, HOLE! feels much less strained and contrived than it might in the hands of lesser performers, which means the audience is awarded with, for lack of a better phrase, an easy way into it (sorry). Elements of it still feel like a work-in-progress and it's sometimes a little loose and sloppy (again, sorry) but it's nonetheless thoroughly entertaining and both Brasch and Leonhard-Hooper are effortlessly engaging and funny. It's a shamelessly stupid bit of cabaret but one that is treated seriously by its writer-performer duo, and is all the better for it, so if you find yourself in Soho in the next week, or Edinburgh in the next month, you can do far worse for yourself than seeking out a nice bit of HOLE!

Tickets for HOLE! are available here. The show will also be playing the Edinburgh Fringe Festival from August 5th to August 30th.

While watching, or rather enduring, Indhu Rubasingham’s production of Martin Crimp’s latest take on Molière’s The Misanthrope (or, to give it its much funnier title, the Cantankerous Lover), I found myself recalling Stewart Lee’s gag about audiences discussing his stand up: “Did you see Stewart Lee? Yeah. Was it funny? No, but I agreed the fuck out of it.” This production falls into the same mould, albeit this time entirely unironically. An excruciating display of self-congratulation and back patting that never once threatens to be controversial or interesting, instead pandering to an audience who know what’s right and won’t hear otherwise, Crimp’s adaptation of the text is a lousy, lazy affair that has nothing to say and yet still insists on saying it loudly and badly.

First performed 360 years ago, Molière’s text is a satire about the hypocrisies of the French aristocracy and the facade of manners and apparent decency to which they supposedly conformed. Alceste, the protagonist, refuses to behave as demanded of high society and is thus ostracised, highlighting how those who speak their minds could not be tolerated by those with the wealth and power. At a time when theatre was fiercely controlled and restricted, the text was a poke in the very eye of influence and authority and was thus courageous, albeit in a rather limited fashion. By contrast this version, if it’s about anything, is a tedious exercise in both cowardice and the very conformity against which the text is supposed to rail.

The titular misanthrope - in this production, Sandra Oh’s Alice - is an outspoken novelist and critic whose views cause her to face the dreaded “cancellation” from the elites of the literary and entertainment world. What those views are is anyone's guess, as Crimp makes craven allusions to Gaza and the Berlinale but is never brave enough to spell out exactly what Alice has said (other than that she thinks people need to speak out) on the issue, thus trying to have his cake and eat it, except the cake tastes like regurgitated shit. When the moment of ostracism finally arrives, it is both unearned and baffling, because not only does the text never actually engage with its ideas but Alice also never says anything shocking or controversial lest Crimp alienate a single member of the audience.

Like Molière’s original text, Crimp’s adaptation is also written in verse. The effect of this is to render it like a GCSE drama piece, albeit with none of the wit or charm. The dialogue is the worst combination of facile and smug, constantly thinking itself infinitely more intelligent than it is while stumbling around like a drunk for anything of worth to say. The uneven rhymes and staccato delivery quickly become tiresome as Crimp desperately tries to contrive meaning and profundity after driving himself into a ditch of his own making. The text thuds rather than sings, entirely devoid of rhythm, and as it drags on for what is, relatively speaking, a quite short runtime of 105 minutes, it becomes apparent that it isn’t about anything and that Crimp, far from adapting the text, has instead simply transformed it into a pious yet meaningless whine.

With little of note to work with, the performances also suffer. Sandra Oh, to her credit, is good, and her skills as a comedic actor just about see her through the vacant mire of the text. She is alone in this however. The rest of the performances are listless and, in a good few cases, actively terrible. Oh is the only one who tries to make it work but with no support from the rest of the cast (except, at a push, Tom Mison, who is passable as her partner Stefan) it is a hopeless endeavour. This is as much Rubasingham’s fault as the ensemble’s, however, as she has seemingly directed a bunch of people to behave as though they’re starring in different plays from one another, which further exacerbates the sense that this is a production that has no idea what on earth it wants to say.

I wasn’t insulted or offended by The Misanthrope, I was simply bored by it. It is a vacuous void of a production, with few redeeming features and fewer moments that even pique one’s interest. The first scene, in which Alice argues with her best friend and then criticises a budding novelist to her face is by far and away the best in the show, with everything that follows rapidly disintegrating into nothing as the ensemble flails and then fails to sell either Rubasingham’s vision or Crimp’s words. It’s a mess of a production that oozes an arrogance and self-righteousness that is wholly unearned and unbecoming, and it is the worst thing I have seen on stage so far this year. What a shame.

Tickets for The Misanthrope are available here (if you must…).

What is the meaning of a hot dog? That is the symbolic question posed by Richard Nelson’s Springwood, a loose adaptation of Roger Mitchell’s 2012 film Hyde Park on Hudson, also written by Nelson, which presents a fictitious account of the visit by King George VI and his wife, Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother), to the home of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1939. With inevitable war with Germany looming, the King, relatively recently crowned following the abdication of his Nazi-sympathising brother, visited America - the visit British monarch to do so - to seek assurances from Roosevelt that, if and when war arrived, the Americans would defend Britain and help to liberate Europe from the tyranny of Hitler. Thus began the quote-unquote “Special Relationship” to which the two countries have been lashed ever since.

Taking its name from the New York estate in which Roosevelt was born, raised and ultimately buried, Springwood is pointedly timely in its depiction of a British monarch visiting America in order to advocate on behalf of British interests and in favour of defence against tyranny. Though the circumstances are somewhat different now - the call of the tyrant is very much coming from inside the (White) House, so to speak - Nelson draws clear parallels between George VI’s aims and those of the current occupier of the throne, focusing on the reluctance of the so-called “land of the free” to actually defend freedom and, in Roosevelt’s case at least, the disconnect between a president who wants to help and a population exhausted by economic turmoil and war, a significant number of whom aren’t entirely unsympathetic to the cause of the aggressors.

While it’s very much a dusty old antique shop of a play - though I do mean that lovingly - Springwood is pleasantly dry and witty, with a real sense of humour about itself. For all of the seriousness of the subject matter, Nelson’s script is light and playful and, particularly in the second act, quite layered in its exploration not just of the “Special Relationship” but also of the unconventional relationship between FDR and his wife Eleanor and of the fractious and sometimes stiff relationship between George and Elizabeth, both of whom were thrown into their roles somewhat unexpectedly. Hints are made at the queerness of Eleanor and Nelson explores the lengths to which people went to hide FDR’s polio and indiscretions from public view, which feels quite quaint in an era where we expect to know everything about our politicians.

The initial intention was for Stanley Tucci (yes, that Stanley Tucci) to direct this but he was unable to due to “scheduling conflicts”. As such, Nelson also directs and it is here that he is found wanting. It’s impossible to know how Tucci would have approached the material but Nelson plays things very safe. The scene transitions are simple, the set design is uninventive and the lighting has but two modes: on and off. This sometimes leaves the play struggling for momentum and energy as, though the script is funny and the performances are decent, there are regular pauses to indicate a scene change and these are, though smooth, quite lazy and bland and often stall the play in its tracks.

The performances are excellent, however, and Robert Lindsay as Roosevelt and Andrew Havill (who has starred in Hyde Park on Hudson and The King's Speech, albeit in different roles) as King George VI are particularly good and make the camaraderie and friendship between the two men both believable and engaging. Jemma Redgrave, whose television performances I regularly find stilted and lacking in confidence, is similarly decent here as Eleanor Roosevelt, occasional lapses in accent aside, while Rebecca Night plays the queen as suitably paranoid and irritating. The ensemble make this work, even in its stuffier moments, and their natural comic timing and easy presence elevate both the humour and the drama of the piece.

So, what is the meaning of a hot dog? For Nelson, the food, served at a picnic held in honour of the visiting monarch, represented how despite their differences in values and upbringing, FDR and King George VI were able to find common ground and present as one when it really mattered. This is perhaps both the play’s greatest strength and its most obvious weakness: Nelson’s writing is well structured and he flirts with many themes, yet he is much too enamoured with the idea of the “Special Relationship” to analyse it critically. As such, the play is never quite gritty or forceful enough - though it is Hampstead Theatre, so I guess you can’t expect that - despite it being consistently entertaining and amusing.

Tickets for Springwood are available here (though the show closes on Saturday).

Clocking in at a lean hour, The Guilty feels a little like a TV thriller that’s simply been made for the stage in ways both good and bad. A one-man show, albeit one with other voices heard through a mobile phone and a headset, it follows Joe (Russell Tovey), a police officer suspended from active duty and forced to work as a call handler in an emergency control room while he awaits trial for a potential misdemeanour. What begins as any ordinary evening in the control room, with drug addicts and whiny neighbours phoning in to ask for help, soon turns into something altogether more urgent when a woman calls from the back of a van claiming to have been kidnapped. With time running out and nowhere to go, Joe must use all of his wiles and skills to try and locate and rescue the woman without ever leaving the lonely room in which he is based.

If this sounds like copaganda, that’s because it is. Nonetheless, it is well-produced and acted copaganda, and there’s merit in that. There’s merit too in how the play builds tension, slowly at first and then suddenly in a cascade as Joe begins to lose control of the situation. With its single location and use of unseen voices to create drama, it is reminiscent of Steven Knight’s 2013 film Locke, in which Tom Hardy plays a character whose life is collapsing around him while he drives down the motorway, except here Tovey’s character is stuck in place, relying on colleagues and other officers to do the legwork while he tries to reassure the victim that help is coming.

Directed by Felix Barrett, the artistic director of Punchdrunk, The Guilty boasts effective light and sound design by Anna Watson and Gareth Fry respectively, both of which tighten the knot of suspense around the audience and help to maintain the momentum as the peril escalates. The set is basic - a few desks, a few computers, and a chair for Joe to sit at - but it’s lit like an interrogation, with Joe regularly in sharp focus as the rest of the room fades into darkness, helping to create empathy for a character who is pointedly written as temperamental, aggressive and selfish, even as he tries to go above and beyond, for reasons that only become clear in the final stretch, to rescue the victim.

Where this flounders is in Moss’ script which, while intriguing and full of red herrings and twists, never quite feels believable. The character of Joe is underdeveloped - he’s a bad cop trying to do good and regularly coming up short, and that’s about it - and with such a short runtime, we don’t really get much opportunity to know or understand him. Likewise, the various voices and other characters we hear, though superbly performed, are all loosely defined. In part, this to generate mystery; the play only works if the audience is blindsided by what happens. Yet, at the same time, it becomes difficult to invest in the story when we know so little about the people involved in it. There are also a few too many contrivances and conveniences that further neuter the impact of the storytelling.

Nevertheless, as a production this is impressive. The technical excellence of the show elevates it, and Tovey’s performance is strong with him doing great work capturing Joe’s desperation to do good and his sudden fury when things don’t go his way. As the narrative beats along and the twists pile up, Tovey maintains real control of his character, even as the plot runs away from him. Given Tovey’s… inconsistency as an actor, it’s nice to see him show off his skills here, and he is the glue that holds the piece together and imbues it with enough authenticity to prevent it from falling down around him right to the end.

This is a solid show that, if anything, needed to be a bit longer to allow the audience to get a feel for what these characters are really like and to let the drama percolate a little. It’s well directed and produced and Tovey’s performance is worth seeing, though the script never grips as it needs to, particularly towards the end when the tension is at its peak. That said, it’s good - not great, but good - and works as a human drama, albeit one seeped in copaganda that flubs it a tad when it comes to exploring what Joe did to get himself suspended and how that affects his decisions.

Tickets for The Guilty are available here.

Nassim Soleimanpour’s one-person show White Rabbit Red Rabbit defies easy description. It has no director - Soleimanpour’s words are the direction, and the actor on stage, reading them for the first time, must respond accordingly - no light nor sound design, and minimal staging, with the “set” comprising no more than a stepladder, a table and two chairs. There are no readthroughs, no rehearsals, no tech weeks; there is just an actor doing a cold read and attempting to make some sense of the writer’s instructions and message, so that the audience might take something away from the show. It’s a work that relies heavily on the talent and dramatic instincts of the person on stage and their ability to interact with and involve the audience, the vast majority of whom will also have no idea what to expect, and one that requires real courage and improvisation on the part of the actor surrendering to it.

Last night it was the turn of theatre royalty Kathryn Hunter to take on the task. Known for her remarkable physicality, in many ways Hunter is the perfect person to take on a script that asks its performer to imitate animals and her easy charm and natural warmth, not to mention her delightfully raspy voice, all helped her to break down the invisible wall between performer and audience. This is exactly Soleimanpour’s intention. The script calls for numerous instances of audience participation, with volunteers / unwilling victims invited to share the stage with the actor and perform various Iranian fables, which the actor “directs” with guidance from Soleimanpour’s script, as themes of complicity and culpability begin to assert themselves. The result is a show that is singular and unpredictable.

It’s a remarkable example of what experimental theatre can be in the right hands, yet for all of its weirdness and surrealism, it is quite intricately structured. Soleimanpour is acutely aware of his almost ethereal role as a writer, and his script makes numerous references to the dialogue between writer, performer and audience. Hunter (or whoever else plays the part) becomes an avatar for Soleimanpour, reading his words and following, or perhaps choosing not to follow, his instructions, yet the actor is very pointedly an actor, reading the script along with us for the first time, so that the facade of theatre collapses. This makes for a fascinating dilemma. Soleimanpour can only imagine, from a room in Iran sixteen years ago, what each performance might look like. He speaks to us from the past and we, in turn, respond in the future. He has no control, other than in the words he has written, over what happens on a particular evening and so, much like the actor, he must surrender his authority.

And yet, though each interpretation of the show will be different (I can’t imagine other actors doing an impression of an ostrich, or indeed doing an impression cheetah doing an impression of an ostrich, quite like Kathryn Hunter can, for example…) the broad ideas that Soleimanpour is trying to communicate to the audience - ideas of political oppression and violence, and how these first become normalised and then, over time, almost instinctive - prevent the piece from becoming unwieldy. The text is profound in its themes yet playful in its writing, and though the execution is unpredictable, it culminates in an ending, foreshadowed from the very beginning, that hints at inevitability, as though Soleimanpour is trying to wrestle with the fact that his time, and the time of all of those under the kosh of the Iranian regime, could run out at any moment.

White Rabbit Red Rabbit is a show that deserves to be seen at least once, if only to experience what theatre can be when the barriers are broken down and the actor is essentially as one with the audience. I plan to see it again in September with Archie Madekwe, which I expect will be equally fascinating, not least because his style is so different from Hunter’s, but also because it will be interesting to see how the narrative shifts, how the decisions change and whether Soleimanpour’s intentions hold firm in someone else’s hands. For now though, I highly recommend this and I would love to hear about other people’s experiences of the show with different actors.

Tickets for the various one-off performances of White Rabbit Red Rabbit are available here.

There’s something so liberating about dancing. Indeed, in many ways, it is the great leveller. It forms part of rituals and ceremonies right across the globe, it requires neither language nor any common culture to understand, and it bridges divides between total strangers. When wars end, people take to the streets and dance. When we celebrate a couple’s love for one another, we dance. When we’re alone and nobody’s watching and an absolute banger comes on shuffle, we dance. To paraphrase Emma Goldman, there can be no revolution without it. We can all flail our limbs, sweat half to death and feel a rhythm pulsing through every sinew of our bodies. It’s just that some of us - Nikita Kuzmin, for example - are a little bit better at it (and look a hell of a lot sexier doing it) than others.

It is this love of dance, not just as an artform but as a primal, pure expression of one’s beliefs, emotions and values, that is so central to Supernova, Nikita’s second show in as many years. Unlike last year’s Midnight Dancer, which told a love story through dance, Supernova is a much more personal affair for Nikita. It’s about him: it’s about his journey through life, the different styles and influences that have inspired him over the years, and the life he now lives as a professional on Strictly Come Dancing, a show on which he has proven to be a real asset and one its most popular stars, and not just with women and queer men. Yet Strictly…, a show about amateurs learning to dance, can only do so much for someone with decades of experience.

Surrounded by and working with a group of other pros, Supernova offers Nikita a chance to demonstrate what he can really do on a dancefloor. Choreographed in collaboration with Jason Gilkinson, the show features a series of routines that straddle dance genres and pay homage to a range of different eras, from classic Hollywood to 70s disco and modern house, each of which is punctuated with Nikita talking to the audience, and sometimes to his guest star (in Wimbledon, fellow and now-ex Strictly… pro Karen Hauer) about his life and what dance means to him. Yet though there are emotional moments - a dance tribute to Nikita’s late grandfather is particularly touching - the show is spirited and fun, and Nikita never takes himself too seriously or overplays the importance of dance, which for him is ultimately about people having fun, embracing each other, and surrendering to the beat.

Shows like this are by their very nature hen-do coded (complimentary), and it takes someone with natural charisma to captain them. Thankfully, Nikita has this in spades. He’s funny, albeit in a knowingly cheesy way, and has real rapport with his audience. He knows and embraces the fact that he’s hot but is never egotistical with it, and he has an ability to make dance accessible. Resultingly, this show sometimes has a tendency to feel chaotic and unstructured in between the expertly choreographed and performed dance routines, and though this is all part of Nikita’s schtick things do sometimes seem to spiral out of his control and he hasn’t quite mastered how to pull things back together.

Nonetheless, as a dance show this is a spectacle of raw talent. The routines are delightful and the dancers who support Nikita are excellent, with each of them afforded an opportunity to shine individually as well as part of the ensemble. The absence of a narrative tying things together does mean that we’re often just moving from one routine to the next with little linking them beyond Nikita’s personal love and appreciation for the various styles but the routines dazzle with their technical brilliance. Supernova is thus consistently entertaining, not to mention heartfelt and affectionate, and Nikita is the kind of showman it’s just so easy to love.

Tickets for Nikita Kuzmin: Supernova are available here (though it’s touring and finishes in under a week).

Wes, a successful music producer, receives a visit from his listless younger brother Alex at his luxurious home. Alex, desperate for a big break in the music industry and currently going through a tumultuous and sudden breakup with his fiancé, wants Wes to help him, relying on memories from their childhood when they used to make music together in the garage. Wes, meanwhile, is dealing with a crisis with his latest signing, who has been caught on camera assaulting a fellow rapper. As the two brothers first reminisce and then squabble, old tensions and traumas rise to the surface, which causes a strain on their relationship that threatens to destroy it entirely.

It’s a plot and a thematic thrust we’ve seen hundreds of times before, and often in better plays. Jonathan Caren’s script, while perfectly well structured and sprinkled with the occasional thoughtful aphorism, is predictable to a fault and he is never willing to sink into the grit and grime of the various ideas that run through the narrative. Issues of family trauma, jealousy, modern masculinity and violence are all flirted with but the text remains firmly within the comfort zone of surface level tensions, lest it unearth something more complicated and knotty that it would not be able to disentangle. As a result, all the beats are generic, as though they’re an unintentional mirror of the commercial, manufactured records that Wes produces, which sometimes leaves the production grasping for something to actually say.

Nonetheless, it just about works because the performances are solid enough to make the fraught relationship between the two brothers feel authentic, even if their individual characters are patchy and underdeveloped. Josh Radnor and Noah Galvin have a fractious, sparky chemistry (though I must confess I thought they were lovers for the first five minutes or so…) and as all the hidden traumas and wounds in their relationship are exposed, they both do fine work capturing how it is possible to love and hate someone simultaneously. Radnor in particular is adept at playing cold and hard-faced, while Galvin’s expressive naiveté masks his character’s deep-seated anxiety and insecurity.

Daniel Bailey's unobtrusive, clean direction further allows the performers to just do their thing and the set is neat and does not distract from the unfolding drama. The smallness of the Soho Theatre stage, which in this production is fenced in by audience seats at both sides, heightens the sense of a claustrophobic tightening that resembles a panic attack, particularly in the final third, and as the tension reaches a crescendo and the stage becomes the scene of a brawl, one gets the sense that the walls and the environment really are crashing down around them, and it is in these moments that Radnor and Galvin do their best work.

The piece also has a pleasant musicality to it and Noah Galvin’s soulful voice makes the snippets of songs that punctuate the various arguments and disagreements between the two brothers a delight to listen to. There’s a real appreciation for music as an artform pumping through the text, and it often feels like a celebration of the ability of music and songwriting to deconstruct and explore emotions in a way that words sometimes cannot. Meanwhile, Khalil Madovi, who wrote the music for the text and also stars as Wes’ fresh new megastar, has great stage presence and elevates musical moments that, like the dialogue, are a little perfunctory into something that grips the audience's attention and tickles our need to move to the rhythm.

Hit Machine is fine. It breezes by in 75 minutes and the performances are good enough that the problems with the script don't sink it entirely. Galvin, who is just breathtakingly handsome and effortlessly charming, and Radnor are easy to watch and playful on stage, and Madovi likewise has a breezy energy that keeps the momentum of the piece moving nicely. It won't change the world and I'll have forgotten it by the middle of next week but it's a nice enough time at the theatre that knows what it is and does it well.

Tickets for Hit Machine are available here.

Avenue Q’s reputation as an adult take on Sesame Street precedes it and so too does its popularity. The current West End run - its first London revival in two decades - has already been extended to January, with hints of a further extension to come. Just think, Avenue Q might yet be the inaugural show at the Dame Judi Dench Theatre! The show’s return to London feels apt, nay necessary, in the current moment, as culture tries to wrangle with a global shift to the right and an increasingly complex relationship with accountability, cancellation and the right to cause offence, so what better way to immerse ourselves back into these issues than in the company of a bunch of crude, rude and hilarious puppets singing about porn, sex and racism!

First thing’s first: this show and this production are a technical, theatrical marvel. There is so much ingenuity in the puppetry, the choreography and the staging, all of which appear so seamless in the hands (and arms) of these consummate professionals. The show is littered with so many examples of theatrical trickery and misdirection that parts of it almost feel like a magic act that will leave even the most hardened cynic in awe. That such care and attention to all of this has been devoted to a show that is, on the surface, just a silly parody of a children’s TV show, is a real testament to everyone involved, and enhances what is already an enjoyable experience into something altogether more powerful.

Likewise, the work of those on stage is extraordinary. Noah Harrison are Emily Benjamin are particularly impressive, effortlessly shifting between characters, sometimes right before our eyes, and, much like dogs begin to resemble their owners, their facial expressions and tics perfectly seem to match the puppets they’re controlling. The rest of the ensemble is great too, belting through the songs and embracing the anarchy with an infectious energy that sweeps the audience up in all of the carnage. The show moves with real pace, yet the vocals, the movements and the acting are all tightly controlled.

The book and the songs perhaps need no review from me - everyone already knows they’re good - but it’s worth noting how timeless so much of Avenue Q still is. Minor amendments have been made so that this production references modern shifts in global politics and culture but these are neither intrusive nor laboured, and the vast bulk of the show is at it was 20 years ago. The parody is so successful because it is so recognisable, and no changes are required for that to continue to be true. Yet the songs and the book remain hilarious, and the music is both catchy and intelligently written. It takes mere seconds for the show to immerse the audience into the world of the eponymous street on which it takes place and holds us there with its inventiveness and playfulness for the whole show.

Fabulous stuff.

Tickets for Avenue Q are available here.

What drives a person to assassinate another? It has become a question of some renewed urgency in Britain in the past week1, though history is littered with acts of political murder - Caesar in 44BC, Abraham Lincoln in 1865, Mahatma Gandhi in 1948, and so forth - many of which have proven to be definitive moments in our collective story. Few of these assassinations, however, has been as consequential as that of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austro-Hungary, who was shot by Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip on June 28th 1914. A month later, the ironically named “Great War” broke out and, over the course of the next four years, somewhere in the region of 20 million people lost their lives. Two decades of further upheaval followed, ultimately plunging the world into a further conflict that would claim the lives of another 75 to 85 million people.

Of course, the causes of both wars are complex and multifaceted, and nobody is for one moment suggesting that the assassination of one man was the sole catalyst for the subsequent deaths of a further 100+ million. However, these pinch points in our history, when the entire world seemed to pivot on its axis and change forever in an instant, are ripe for dramatic exploration (“what if…?” is one of the most regular questions in literature) and that is what writer Rajiv Joseph, whose 2010 play Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo recently received its European premiere at the Young Vic, seeks to do here. He isn’t interested in retreading and retelling the story of Franz Ferdinand’s assassination, which is one of historical record, but rather in using said assassination as a narrative hook to explore issues of radicalisation and disaffection that are as pertinent in 2026 as they have ever been.

In many ways, this is a brave exercise. To take a moment of such consequence and to not just dramatise but recontextualise and “edit” it in order to explore different ideas entirely takes real skill and a deftness of both humour and seriousness, and Joseph’s script, though occasionally a little blunt with its parallels and allusions to the modern world, does all of this with some considerable success. Set in the days leading to the assassination, his play posits that Princip and the other would-be assassins, all of whom are starving and dying from Tuberculosis, are motivated not by a desire for Serbian unification, or any political principle or agenda at all really, but rather by the honour, glory and, indeed, food promised to them by Dragutin Dimitrijević, the charismatic leader of the group responsible for killing Ferdinand.

Parallels between Dimitrijević and the toxic male influencers of the Manosphere are drawn throughout the piece, with Joseph focusing on the emotional exploitation of those already exploited by an economic and political system that ignores them at best and actively denigrates them at worst. The would-be assassins’ reluctance to kill the Archduke’s wife Sophie as part of the operation leads to a discussion about how women are blamed for the problems of young men, while a motif of transient, elusive witchcraft permeates the text, as though the boys chosen for the great mission are being dissuaded from it by the spiritual realm, which allows for Dimitrijević to further exploit the boys’ sense of isolation.

Es Devlin’s clever set design likewise heightens the sense of isolation and claustrophobia that these young men feel. The stage resembles a cold, metallic tunnel that faces outwards to the audience and serves as a bunker and a church and later facilitates the arrival of a train carriage on rails. Mirroring the drama, the staging is dark and sometimes obscured by a bend in the tunnel that hides secrets and blocks our view of key moments of conflict, hinting at the fuzzy patchwork of history and how our perspective can be tainted. Lyndsey Turner’s direction, which plays with the space and sometimes reduces it to what feels like the tiniest of rooms, likewise well mirrors the psychological loneliness and entrapment of the men.

Perhaps most impressive about Archduke, however, is how Joseph seamlessly weaves dry comedy into what is ultimately a play about the events leading to the calamitous First World War. The dialogue is quick and witty and the interactions between Dimitrijević, his cook Sladjana (the only woman in the play and the only one who can foresee the misery the assassination will cause) and the three potential assassins are rich with humour, even as they discuss committing an act of terror on the streets of Sarajevo. Accordingly, the interweaving of contemporary issues into a play set over a century ago feels natural.

Also noteworthy are the performances, particularly of Marc Wootoon (best known, amazingly, as Mr Poppy in the Nativity! films…) as Dimitrijević and Janice Connolly as Sladjana, who has arguably the most part to play in that she is the main comic relief but also the conscience of the piece. Wootoon’s Dimitrijević is delightfully crazed but also, like so many of the influencers to whom young men have lost their critical faculties, horribly compelling and convincing, and as he exploits the young men’s hunger, their poverty and their sense of rage with their lot, he becomes all the more persuasive. The three assassins also do stellar work capturing the emotional turmoil and weight of legacy placed upon their youthful, naive shoulders.

Archduke is yet another example of what the Royal Court does so well: fresh, exciting new dramas with something insightful to say about the world in which we currently live. Though it isn’t quite as accomplished as their two other European premieres this year - Guess How Much I Love You? and John Proctor is the Villain - it’s an entertaining and brilliantly directed bit of theatre that wrestles with grand ideas and isn’t afraid of confronting their complexities or the vastness of history more generally. If you’re able to get a ticket, it is well worth a look.

Tickets for Archduke are available here.

Aaron Sorkin, the screenwriter best known as the creator of every American liberal’s wet dream, The West Wing, loves nothing more than the mythical “good Republican” (see: The Newsroom), so it’s easy to figure out what attracted him to the character of Atticus Finch. As an educated white man in the deeply racist state of Alabama in the midst of the Great Depression, Atticus is symbolic of everything men like Sorkin like to think about themselves and how they would have behaved had they been alive in that era. He stands up against injustice, he fights for the rights of everyone, regardless of race, and he deplores the violence and prejudices of his neighbours and friends. He is, in other words, the quintessential “white saviour”.

Sorkin’s adaptation of Harper Lee’s seminal 1960 novel, which was published at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, is, much like the novel itself, digestible and accessible without shying away from the realities of the Deep South and its dark heart. Lee’s novel has a lightness to it and an almost adventurous tone, seen as it is through the eyes of a woman reflecting on her childhood, and though Sorkin recontextualises the work so that Atticus is much more pointedly the protagonist here, this take on the story is pervaded with that same sense of childlike wonder about, and indeed disappointment with, the world.

The trial of Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white woman, likewise plays a much more prominent role here than in the novel, and Sorkin restructures the narrative so that the trial and Atticus’ defence of Robinson serves as a framing device to the coming-of-age reflections of his two children, Scout and Jem, and their friend Dill. It is here that Sorkin’s adaptation is at its strongest, as the children (played by adults) are forced to come to terms with the fact that the world is cruel, that their father isn’t infalliable, and that the values Atticus holds so dear and has tried to instill in them - values of respect, of politeness, of faith in the system - are wholly inadequate in the face of such violent, racist fervour.

The contradictions between the world the Finches wish to believe in and the one that actually exists around them are interestingly handled, and the manner in which Sorkin weaves the events of the trial, and its subsequent bloody aftermath, into Scout, Jem and Dill’s reflections on the summer they spent together makes for some clever parallels between the world then and the world now, with events like the Charlottesville terror attack looming large over the proceedings. Likewise, though the production is riddled with the sort of quick-witted “Sorkinisms” that sound profound in the moment but dissipate on contact with air, the attempts to make Atticus a little less perfect and to give Calpurnia more of an assertive and active role are worthwhile.

The real strength of this production lies in the four central performances, however. Atticus has been played by a range of excellent actors on stage, from Jeff Daniels to Rafe Spall to Ed Harris, and Richard Coyle is no exception. His take on Atticus is sensitive and thoughtful but also full of quiet fury, and he makes a character that is, despite his flaws, still placed upon a pedestal by Sorkin, appear believable and real. Anna Munden, Gabriel Scott and Dylan Malyn, who play Scout, Jem and Dill respectively, likewise do stellar work portraying their characters as both children experiencing the story for the first time and as adult narrators reflecting on that time through more cynical, world-weary eyes.

This is a fine adaptation, and fine production, of a much-loved novel and one that tries to correct some of the issues with Lee’s original text. One gets the sense that there is an element of Go Set a Watchman, Lee’s first, more dour draft of what ultimately became To Kill a Mockingbird, in the portrayal of Atticus and the cynicism about institutions, though true to form Sorkin struggles to fully accept that the systems he lauds didn’t err in the case of Tom Robinson but were rather designed to reach the verdict they did. It’s “don’t boo, vote!” as a play, and though that leaves a lot to be desired, it’s an effectively done take on that mantra all the same.

Tickets for To Kill a Mockingbird are available here.

Before I get to my top ten shows of the year thus far, here, in alphabetical order, are some honourable mentions that came close but didn’t quite make the cut:

• Consumed at the Park Theatre

• Daniel’s Husband and The Price, both at Marylebone Theatre

• Deep Azure and Mother Courage and Her Children, both at Shakespeare’s Globe

• End of the Rainbow and Natalie Palamides: WEER, both at Soho Theatre Walthamstow

• English National Ballet’s Body & Soul at Sadler’s Wells

• Fallen Angels at the Menier Chocolate Factory

• Into the Woods at the Bridge Theatre

• Oh, Mary! at Trafalgar Theatre

• The Rivals at the Orange Tree Theatre

• The Spy Who Came in From the Cold at sohoplace

Should any of the above shows still be running or return, I would highly recommend them… just not quite as highly as I would recommend those in my top ten. And on that note, here’s the countdown…

#10 - Black Comedy at the Orange Tree Theatre

A farce with depth. Shaffer, who has another entry in this list, makes inventive use of light and its absence and director Caroline Steinbeis approaches the text with a feverish energy that heightens the comedic impact of the slapstick and silliness, which is perfectly choreographed and performed by the ensemble. This runs for another week or so and is well worth a visit if you get a chance.

#9 - Mass at the Donmar Warehouse

Adapted from his film of the same name, Fran Kranz’s Mass was an emotional gutpunch that felt like a primal shriek at the risible state of gun violence in the United States of America. Anchored by four magnificent performances, this was a fiery and compelling production that was pure theatrical drama at its best.

#8 - Cyrano de Bergerac at the Noël Coward Theatre

A genuinely fresh and exciting adaptation of one of the most well-worn stories in all of theatre, this RSC production of Edmond Rostand’s classic ode to love and poetry is woozily romantic and riotously funny without sacrificing any of the tragedy. Adrian Lester and Susannah Fielding have chemistry in spades and the direction is vivacious and inventive. This runs for another two months and is well worth your time and money.

#7 - Summerfolk in the Olivier Theatre at the National

The more I reflect on Summerfolk, the more profound and contemporary it seems, despite being written well over a century ago. A tale of upper middle class tourists frolicking and bickering as the country around them rises up in violent revolution against people like them, Robert Hastie’s production of this take on the material felt vast and overwhelming, as though taking aim at the audience itself.

#6 - Guess How Much I Love You? in Jerwood Theatre Downstairs at the Royal Court

It was inevitable that a Royal Court production would feature in this list - it’s by some distance the best and most consistent theatre in London right now - and this new writing by Luke Norris was a realist masterclass, boasting a pair of anguished and captivating performances by Robert Aramayo and Rosie Sheehy. This was tragic, witty and deeply insightful about grief and loss.

#5 - Romeo & Juliet at the Harold Pinter Theatre

The best adaptation of Shakespeare’s classic love story I’ve seen - and certainly a corrective tonic to Jamie Lloyd’s major traffic incident of a production back in 2024 - Robert Icke’s take on the material featured two rapturous performances from Noah Jupe and Sadie Sink as the eponymous lovers. Icke clearly understood and respected the text’s playfulness and warm humour, while his emphasis on all those motifs of fate and inevitability made the tragedy all the more affecting.

#4 - Arcadia at the Old Vic

Stoppard’s mathematical masterpiece, which has now transferred to the Duke of York’s Theatre for the summer, is a marvel in the hands of Carrie Cracknell, who stages it almost like a ferocious debate in-the-round, with all of the pomp and grandeur stripped away so that the focus is firmly on Stoppard’s rigorous and poetic text. See it while you still can.

#3 - Man and Boy in the Dorfman Theatre at the National

A lesser known, lesser staged Rattigan brought to life by a superlative Ben Daniels in a damning exploration of the sleaze and grubbiness of capital and the men who dabble in it. The interactions between Daniels and Laurie Kynaston, as his pitable and wretchedly devoted son, were riveting in a production that was knotty and complicated.

#2 - John Proctor is the Villian in Jerwood Theatre Downstairs at the Royal Court

Transferring to Wyndham’s Theatre next year, the second entry from the Royal Court in this list is a masterful take on female power and resilience, as examined through the lens of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. A call to arms and revolution against exploitative men, Belflower’s rich, thoughtful text is beautifully directed and acted and deserves your attention when it returns next February.

#1 - Equus at the Menier Chocolate Factory

Another Shaffer, and this one is just frighteningly good. Toby Stephens and Noah Valentine are electrifying in a production that captures all of the intense, horny weirdness of the text, while director Lindsay Posner makes sublime use of the intimate, claustrophobic space of the Menier to hurl the audience deep into this psychosexual fever dream. A true masterpiece that is transferring to Bath for a very limited run in the next few weeks.

What are some of your favourites of the year so far? Do you profoundly disagree with any of my choices? Is there something you think I’ve completely missed? Let me know in the comments!

*the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond wins the Best Ice Cream Award

Do you get it? It’s radical because it’s an all-female cast… starring in a play written by a man… but! They’re in a production directed by… oh. A man. Forgive the facetiousness but, regardless of the quality of this show (which I think is, broadly speaking, good), it’s obvious that this revival was thrown together in a panic to fill a seven-week gap in the Old Vic’s schedule. As I previously predicted, it’s staged in-the-round to save on costs, and the character names, settings and dialogue are all as Mamet wrote them over four decades ago. Nothing, other than the sex of the actors, has been changed, which begs the question: why?

The obvious riposte - why not - is a fair one, and there’s no reason why Indira Varma shouldn’t play Shelly ‘The Machine’ Levene, nor why Dorothea Myer-Bennett shouldn’t play Williamson. Both are decent actors, and there’s something superficially interesting about women playing the leads in a text defined by oppressive masculinity and chauvinism. Alas, that’s all the change is - superficial - and one can’t help but think of Sam Wallman’s infamous drone strikes comic as the closest parallel. So these characters are women now (except they’re not, they’re still just playing men) - so what?

It’s a question this production - which, I repeat, is directed by a man, which undermines it further - is unable to answer. It’s the same script performed by women, and though they’re all perfectly good at what they do, this is the second show in a row in which the Old Vic has alluded to different and interesting power dynamics (in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest it was the question of race) and then wasted the opportunity to do something interesting with them. As such, what we’re left with is just any other telling of Mamet’s story; the dynamics are the same, the characters are the same, the narrative is the same. It is, for all intents and purposes, no different to the last London production at the Playhouse Theatre back in 2017.

That said, on those terms this is a decent revival. The performances are solid - the aforementioned Varma and Myer-Bennett in particular, though the whole ensemble is decent - and Mamet’s script crackles with a catty irritability that lends itself to some great moments of raw humour. The staging is simple and unobtrusive, which works, and it breezes along in under 90 minutes. The final scene is brilliantly played and the stars have a chemistry that makes us believe in their rivalries and conflicts. Likewise, though it’s in-the-round for cost reasons, the fishbowl effect of watching these characters fight for dominance over one another is effective.

What could’ve been a production about how women have also been corrupted by capitalism, or how gender essentialism still reigns supreme, or how the success of the Reagan Revolution was to turn us all into beasts of the system is instead just a perfectly passable and functional revival of Glengarry Glen Ross. And that’s fine! Not everything needs to be groundbreaking. But this feels like it had the potential to do something interesting but wasn’t able to - perhaps Mamet wouldn’t allow it - and that’s a shame. Nonethelesss, I can’t judge a show for what it isn’t, only for what it is. And this is fine bordering on good.

Tickets for Glengarry Glen Ross are available here.

What better way to experiece pure, undiluted Brechtian alienation than by slowly roasting to death in the middle of an outdoor theatre at the height of yet another heatwave? With the evil sun blazing down on the audience, Elle White’s production of Mother Courage and Her Children, Brecht’s anti-war, anti-fascist diatribe, felt all the more like an exercise in collective penance, something that the playwright would’ve surely welcomed, especially given that his play, written in the immediate aftermath of Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland, tells a story of a continent burning beneath the weight of political decisions made by people who will never have to suffer the consequences. How damningly fitting.

Set over the course of twelve years, Mother Courage and Her Children follows the titular characters as they traverse a ravaged, divided and wartorn Europe, selling goods from a cart to soldiers. As the war wages and the years pass, Courage loses her children to conscription and violence and her alliances - if one can call them that - shift in the pursuit of money. With a pointedly Trumpian attitude to business, Courage seeks profit wherever she can. At various times she flogs “Courage Ammo”, “Courage Burgers” and even sex work, her moniker associated not with heroism or bravery but rather with cold, hard, calculating capitalism. She is neither courageous nor motherly, yet she is the avatar through which the audience must experience the play’s increasing cruelty.

As the play progresses, its paradoxes begin to reveal themselves. It is, despite Brecht’s own feelings to the contrary1, a tragic tale, yet in keeping with his principles for drama there are no fallen heroes of fatal flaws here. Courage isn’t a good person felled by some personal failing but rather she, like everyone else in the play, is a pawn of something much greater and unconquerable. Everyone is existing and surviving beneath the vast, ravenous spectre of war and violence, which erodes their humanity and transforms them into amoral husks. Every decision has a consequence, not least Courage’s obsession with profiteering, which causes her to lose all three of her children, with the audience forced to watch as the most unconscionable terrors suddenly unfold before us.

Courage, too, is a paradox. She deplores war and is desperate for her children not to fight, yet she revels in all it offers her. When peace appears possible Courage panics, fearing that her trade will collapse and she and her children will be forced to live in penury. When one side is no longer able to pay for her services, she follows the other. Her business model thrives on a conflict she detests yet one that she helps to facilitate by providing weapons and ammunition to those who are fighting. It is in this paradox that Brecht’s intellectual rage against war and what it does to people is at its most potent, and in all of the hypocrisies of Courage’s character that it is at its most fascinating.

Yet though it is more of an intellectual exercise than an emotional one, when the violence and the horror hits it does so with a forcefulness and bluntness that is gruelling. Anna Jordan’s adaptation of the script leans perhaps a little too heavily into sympathising with Mother Courage but the stark, sudden tonal shifts from light-hearted ribaldry to the most callous, unfeeling savagery are both impactful and, though foreshadowed and inevitable, shocking. It is an adaptation full of rage and fury that is punchy, funny and scathing in its depiction of how war corrupts and dehumanises us all, and there’s something quite extraordinary in how director Elle White transforms the space into one of persistent terror and trauma.

At the heart of it is a barnstorming turn by Michelle Terry, who is also the Globe’s artistic director, as Mother Courage. She tears through Jordan’s adaptation of Brecht’s dialogue with a captivating ferocity, playing her like some cockney wide woman trying to sell her wares to anyone and everyone down the covered market. She traverses the various intersections between bawdy humour, devastating sadness and violent rage with an acute sense of who her character is and what motivates her, so that in the play’s final moments we cannot help (apologies Bertolt) pitying her, in spite of her coldness.

The rest of the ensemble is excellent too. Ferdy Roberts, who plays an alcoholic minister who lashes himself to Courage’s travelling market, is robust and thoughtful in a role that is sometimes in danger of becoming too comedic, while Rachelle Diedricks is excellent as Courage’s voiceless daughter Kattrin. Courage’s two sons, played by Vinnie Heaven and Rawaed Asde, bring comedy and tragedy to the piece, and there’s a sweetness and softness to them both that makes the violence they encounter and endure all the more gutwrenching.

At a time of increasing global instability and uncertainty, inflicted on us by a political class obsessed with profit and legacy, the lessons of Mother Courage and Her Children are as pertinent as ever, and this production, with its allusions to the wars in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and beyond, is unforgiving in its rage against the machine. This is only on for a few more days - and those are threatening to be even hotter still - but I highly recommend it for anybody who feels that they aren’t suffering enough in this wretched, damnable heat.

Tickets for Mother Courage and Her Children are available here (though it concludes this weekend)

Emblazoned in capital letters on the promotional poster for Ted Walliker’s one-man show, just above a declaration that “this is not stand-up”, is its monosyllabic title: RON. Little else is revealed. Before the show starts, a single microphone stands beneath a spotlight in the centre of a stage as eerie welcome music plays. Then, a young man in a crumpled, ill-fitting two-piece suit that he appears to have borrowed from his father shuffles forward and stumbles over a couple of excruciatingly awkward and poorly delivered gags. It might not be stand-up but it certainly resembles it, albeit in a rather unheimlich manner. At least, that is, until it doesn’t.

What follows is a celebral, unpredictable 60-minute monologue, part-Lynch and part-Tarantino, that is tinged with a very specific and nicely observed form of queer sadness. As his initial attempts at stand-up flounder, Walliker, in character as Tony, decides instead to regale the audience with a gruesome tale of kidnap, murder and cannibalism involving his dirt-eating childhood friend (and crush) Mike, the Mafia, and fast-food chain mascot Ronald McDonald. As Tony’s monologue veers out of control, it becomes apparent that he is hiding something, not just from the audience but from himself, and that all of this has far less to do with potential ‘jestercide’ than it does with a desperate yearning for validation.

As the co-director, writer, producer and star of the piece, Walliker gives himself quite the task here but he is spirited and engaging, monologuing with a boundless, wide-eyed energy that captures the audience’s attention as he keeps them guessing with his tangents and occasional fourth-wall and character breaks. There’s an element of Stewart Lee in how the act of stand-up itself becomes a key component of the gag, and Walliker does a solid job of playing with the form while also adhering to its most basic and recognisable principles. As such, as the show becomes increasingly unhinged, what holds it together is the sense that this is, for all of his protestations to the contrary, just a stand-up comedian trying to work through some trauma.

Littered through the monologue are a series of jokes, some silly - “there was barely anywhere to stand, except the floor” being a personal favourite - and some profound, and though a number of them get lost in the sheer speed of it all, Walliker’s giddiness and use of the minimalist space, which feels liminal in his hands, makes for an experience that cleverly treads a fine line between the heartfelt and the absurd. All of the hyper violent twists and turns are told to us as mere matters of record, as though the narrative beats, far from being a chronicle of insane acts of criminality, are the mundane and rational actions of two friends enjoying each other’s time and company, which heightens how bizarre it all is.

Given the scope and ambition of what he is trying to achieve, Walliker sometimes has a tendency to overwrite the material and the formal experimentation doesn’t always work. In some ways it is reminiscent of a pre-Fringe work-in-progress in that it feels a little unedited, and although this does contribute to the sense of chaos and the idea of a stand-up comedian spiralling before our very eyes, it also feels as though Walliker is trying to cram too much into a one-hour show, and so our ability to get to properly know him is neutered. Perhaps he needs to either extend the runtime so that the jokes (and the audience) have more space to breathe or kill a few darlings so that those that survive can be better developed.

Did my friend David and I choose to trek all the way to Hammersmith to see this because we saw an advert for it on Instagram and thought Walliker was hot? Mind your own business. Regardless, am I glad we did? Absolutely. Though it is, admittedly by design, messy, and though it isn’t quite as tight or controlled as it perhaps needs to be, RON is an ambitious and exciting show that is brimming with promise. Walliker’s performance is excellent and there’s a real vigour to how he throws himself into the telling of this story which, beneath all of the bloodletting and flesh-eating, has a surprising depth to it, and the monologue itself is full of surprises.

Tickets for RON are available here.

Following a sell-out run at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Swan Theatre last year, Simon Evans and Debris Stevenson’s adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s classical romance Cyrano de Bergerac, starring Adrian Lester as the eponymous libertine and Susannah Fielding and Levi Brown as Roxane, the love of his life, and Christian, his rival for her love, transfers to the Noël Coward Theatre. Told, retold, adapted, readapted, parodied, translated, relocated and modernised so often that it’s difficult to imagine what, if anything, any production could do to make this material feel fresh, Cyrano de Bergerac is a tale that will be familiar to anyone with even the most tangential interest in culture. Yet Evans and Stevenson’s take on the story, though quite firmly rooted in its classical sensibilities, is stylish and contemporary, playfully tinkering with the dialogue and the narrative while still steadfastly capturing the profundity of Rostand’s explorations of the consequences of love, conflict and death.

Threaded through the original text are ideas of longing and mortality, and how the relentless passage of time makes dust of them both. Cyrano’s desperate yearning to be loved by Roxane goes unspoken because beneath all of his wit, intelligence and bravado lies a deep embarrassment and fear of rejection. Likewise, Roxane’s insistence on language and poetry as the most potent embodiments of romance disguises just how uncomfortable she is with simple, honest emotions. Words pass between them in the form of letters and poems, with Christian in the middle as the feint through which Cyrano expresses himself, yet neither speaks truthfully. All around them the world burns. Men return home from war in coffins and urns, and women and children are widowed and orphaned, yet what terrifies them most, albeit in different ways, is love, a word they both dismiss as inadequate.

It’s a tragic tale, yet one that bristles with whimsy and humanity, and it is this that director Simon Evans captures so beautifully. The staging and direction of his production are vivacious and visually profound - indeed, there is almost as much poetry in the choreography and design of the piece as there is in the dialogue - and the tone and aesthetic of it have a sublime quality that is well contrasted with the levity of much of the humour, particularly in the first half. The theatre space extends into the auditorium as the actors and musicians make use of the main floor, the boxes and the balcony to invite the audience to participate and properly invest in the story, heightening the strength of the emotions that come to the fore in the final act, while musically is cleverly woven into the narrative in the form of a chorus whose melodies uplift and wound in equal measure.

Evans and Stevenson’s adaptation of the text blends Rostand’s verse with modern dialogue but the collocation of the two is thoughtful, creating a flow and a rhythm that feels natural. It’s romantic, of course, but also brutal about the realities of war, death and rejection, and though the jokes are plentiful they are written into the romance so casually and organically that they never detract from the overwhelming yearning that defines so much of the story. The first half is riotous and full of silliness, yet the jokes are warm and inviting and feel very much like an authentic facet of how these characters interact, yet there is also a stoicism and seriousness to it so that the intensity of the romantic feelings is never underplayed or dismissed. Occasionally, the drama lags - both the theatre sequence at the start and the Romeo & Juliet-esque balcony scene are a tad overlong - but the dialogue is so rich and humorous and captivating that this is but a minor concern.

At the heart of the piece are a pair of magnificent performances by Lester and Fielding, both of whom imbue their characters with all the rage, uncertainty, desperation, anxiety and awe requried to make them dazzle. Lester’s Cyrano is utterly captivating, operating as though he is holding court and unveiling his very soul to an audience transfixed by his movements and his eloquence, while Fielding’s Roxane is at once sharp and flighty, marauding the stage like a dancer and engaging in verbal jousts with her wannabe lovers and admirers. The two of them have the most exquisite chemistry - it really does feel as though they have known each other all of their lives - which heightens the lilting romanticism of it all and exacerbates all of its cruel, hopeless tragedy.

Given my familiarity with the narrative, I was surprised by just how much I enjoyed this production, which is by far and away the best adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac I’ve seen… well, with the possible exception of the highwayman episode of Blackadder the Third, naturally. It’s invigorating, consistently funny and heartbreaking, and the performances, not just from the two leads but from the entire ensemble, are superb. Evans and Stevenson have breathed a new lease of life into a familiar story, riffing on Rostand’s humour and poetry while bringing an inventiveness and sense of adventure to the how it is staged. Delightful stuff.

Tickets for Cyrano de Bergerac are available here.

Another week, another stage adaptation of a feature film. Whilst we’re not quite at the level of Before I Go To Sleep or The Housemaid just yet - though both of these are alas very firmly on the horizon - the decision to adapt Babak Anvari’s Persian-language horror film Under the Shadow, which was released to great critical acclaim a decade ago, is one that feels both unnecessary and entirely arbitrary, even when one considers the parallels between the source material and the various wars, conflicts and genocides currently tearing through vast swathes of the Middle East. The further decision to take a text that is rooted in both cultural and geographical specificity and translate it into English for an audience of predominantly white liberals at the Almeida in Islington is all the more bizarre still.

Set in Tehran in the mid-to-late 80s, in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution and at the height of the Iran-Iraq War, Under the Shadow unfolds almost entirely within one apartment block in the city. Shideh, a former leftist activist and medical student who has been barred from completing her studies as a result of her politics, lives with her husband, Iraj, and their young daughter, Dorsa. As the war wages and the danger of Saddam’s onslaught on the country draws ever closer, Iraj pleads for Shideh to agree to leave the city. Dorsa, meanwhile, becomes increasingly convinced that their apartment is being haunted by the Djinn, mythological creatures in Arabian and Islamic folklore who possess people’s spirits and steal from them.

The allegory of the Djinn as representative of the new Iranian regime, with its omnipresent parasitism that coerces and terrorises women and children into submission and robs them of their independence and their livelihoods, is obvious, though Anvari’s text and Nasr’s translation-cum-adaptation is nonetheless full of interesting dichotomies. Shideh’s liberated personality is at odds with the strict, prudish nature of her surroundings; her belief in reason and logic jars with the supernatural happenings consuming her family; her feelings of isolation and loneliness are in conflict with her role as a mother and wife. However, the text unfortunately lags because it only skims the surface of these ideas, alluding to and acknowledging but never examining or analysing them.

As director, Nadia Latif’s primary concern is one of atmosphere and suspense and she is somewhat successful in this endeavour. The first act builds slowly as a quiet, low-level dread begins to take root in the apartment. The influence of the regime lingers over Shideh like a guillotine while the threat of being annihilated by a missile is constant, yet there's seemingly something much more sinister hidden in the corners and shadows of what appears to a place of relative peace and domesticity. Shideh and Dorsa’s relationship strains as stories and myths percolate, and we get the sense that devastation, whether in the form of chauvinistic authoritarianism, senseless warfare or supernatural wickedness, is about to befall them both, resulting in a delicious jump scare that startles the audience as the curtain falls on the first act.

Alas, what follows in act two is anticlimactic and rushed. At barely 40 minutes (compared to 75 minutes in act one), act two beats along lifelessly, as though the story has run out of road. What scares exist are neutered by sloppy pacing and a void of energy, while the metaphors become increasingly strained. Leila Farzad, to her credit, tries to maintain the sense of unease with a performance that is consistently committed and thoughtful but the rest of the cast are creaky and there's little she can do to generate an emotional hook in the final scenes, which are over before they've even begun. Accordingly, the play ends on a note of indifference, with a resolution that feels lazy and incomplete.

Tickets for Under the Shadow are available here.

The Barbican seems to have developed something of a quasi-tradition of staging a summer Cole Porter musical. Since the pandemic, they’ve given us productions of Anything Goes and Kiss Me, Kate, and now it’s the turn of High Society, an adaptation of Charles Walters’ 1956 film of the same name, itself a musical adaptation of George Cukor’s 1939 film The Philadelphia Story which, in turn, was an adaptation of a stage play from the same year written by Philip Barry… I hope you're following this. Initially premiering in 1998, the stage version of High Society adopts songs from a number of Porter’s works, such as “I Love Paris”, first used in the 1953 show Can-Can, and “Ridin’ High”, which featured in 1936’s Red, Hot and Blue, which perhaps speaks to the relative dearth of hits in the original film.

The manner in which Kopit embeds and manouevres these other songs into the book does sometimes feel a little clunky, as though what he really wanted to do was write a tribute to Porter’s life and work and has instead become stuck trying to navigate a path through a light, airy but ultimately flimsy story about the shenanigans of the filthy rich. Nonetheless, there is a fuzzy charm and self-aware sense of humour to the book, and very specifically to director Rachel Kavanaugh’s production of it here, that makes it work, albeit sometimes in spite of itself. The songs, almost all of which are recognisable and catchy, contribute to the overall warmth of the piece, and there’s an infectious breezy quality to it, as though Kavanaugh knows that the source material isn’t great and has thus decided to just have some fun with it instead.

This is also apparent in the plot, which is simple and frivolous in ways both good and bad. Set at an opulent wedding party on the East Coast, where socialite Tracy Lord, once divorced, is marrying dull accountant George Kittredge, it follows the characters, including Tracy’s frightfully posh mother, her younger sister Dinah and her Uncle Willy, who is described as having discovered a “fondness for gin” (same), as they try to contend with the presence of two reporters and the arrival of both Tracy’s ex-husband, who still has feelings for her, and her father, who is being blackmailed by the press over an affair he had with a dancer. Silliness and chaos soon ensue as all of the various pieces are thrown around the arena of play until all of the predictable happy endings and resolutions hone into view.

The ensemble is solid and everybody on stage is adept at traversing the fine line between camp and pantomime. Felicity Kendal operates on a hitherto unseen plane of kitsch, stumbling around and shrieking like some demented old harridan and bringing the laughs with every line she delivers, while Freddie Fox, who hasn’t done much musical work before, does a stellar job with the vocals. Helen George, who became indisposed during the performance I saw and was replaced by an understudy at the interval, is cheerily entertaining, while Nigel Lindsay and Carly Mercedes Dyer are likeable and consistently on form. It is Ovenden who steals the show, however, with his gorgeous voice and effortless charisma. He imbues the character of Dexter, Tracy’s ex-husband, with an irresistible allure that makes the (admittedly rushed) ending feel well-earned.

On a stage as large as the Barbican’s, however, High Society still feels undernourished. There’s a strange lack of vivacity to some of the musical numbers, in part because the choreography occasionally thuds and stumbles but more pertinently because the ensemble isn’t big enough. There is so much empty space on the stage, which means that party scenes and big dance sequences don’t quite convince or captivate the way they should. Kavanaugh, as director, does what she can to breathe life and energy into the piece, and the stage design is impressive, but it sometimes sags, which stalls the momentum and highlights the hollowness of the book.

Nevertheless, this is a fun production of a silly story, and it is elevated by the main players, particularly Ovenden, Fox and Kendal. Maybe it isn’t possible to stage a masterful adaptation of this musical because there isn’t much to it beneath the surface but everyone involved does what they can to entertain the audience and sweep us up in the ridiculousness of these characters and their tribulations for a couple of hours. Enjoy it with a cocktail or six and let the fun wash over you and this is a perfectly decent production of an otherwise mediocre musical.

Tickets for High Society are available here.

This year marks the centenary of Peter Shaffer’s birth - indeed, Black Comedy opened the day after what would’ve been his 100th birthday - and he’s quite rightly being celebrated. Though he wrote relatively few plays in his 90 years, he nonetheless had a profound and lasting impact on British theatre, writing not one but two of the greatest dramas of the 20th century: Equus, which is currently halfway through a staggering revival run at the Menier Chocolate Factory, and Amadeus, which is due to be adapted by Jeremy Herrin with Michael Sheen and Callum Scott Howells as Salieri and Mozart next year. However, before either of these were even a scribbled idea in the corner of a page of a scrapbook, there was Black Comedy, a 1965 farce so far removed from the style and tone of his two great dramas that it’s hard to believe they were all written by the same man.

And yet all of Shaffer’s ingenuity and experimentation, not to mention his desire to subvert theatrical conventions, are as apparent here as they are in his other works, and you can see the seeds of the writer he would soon become. The title itself is a pun on the play’s use of light and its absence as Shaffer constructs a scenario in which the characters spend much of their time in total darkness - initially accidentally and then, as the farce becomes ever more chaotic, by design - with the actors forced to behave as though they cannot see each other or their surroundings for much of the runtime. To achieve this, Shaffer instructs the director to stage the start of the play, when the characters can see each other, in actual darkness, so that light becomes its absence and vice versa. When the lights are up, we can see the characters but they are blind; when they are down, the reverse is true.

It’s a nifty concept that allows for a meticulously choreographed style of slapstick that nonetheless feels organic and improvised. Characters flail about, grabbing each other, bumping into things, falling down, mistaking each other for someone else and a whole host of other shenanigans and mischief, but Shaffer makes it work because there is always a logical reason for the characters to remain in the dark. When light is introduced in the form of lighters, matches and torches, the protagonist must snuff it out in order to maintain all of the illusions and lies that must not have light shone upon them, lest the facade crumbles. It’s dramatic irony turned up to eleven; we can see it all, we can anticipate calamities before they happen, and it makes it all the funnier.

In the intimate space of the Orange Tree, director Caroline Steinbeis does excellent work keeping all of the plates spinning as the pace of the narrative becomes ever quicker and more frenzied. The Rube Goldberg-esque nature of it all doesn’t leave her with much room for manouevre, yet she handles it with a remarkable level of control that is also evident in the performances. Bannister is all gangly limbs and exaggerated expressions, yet he doesn’t put a foot wrong; or rather, he puts many feet wrong, exactly as planned. Though his character is the sculptor (literally, for that is his job) of his own pandemonium and is revealed at various points to be a thief, a cheat and a liar, Bannister is able to make us sympathise with the ludicrous situation in which he has become embroiled.

The rest of the cast are excellent too, and though Bannister is the lead it is very much an ensemble piece that requires everyone to be operating on the same ridiculous level. The humour wouldn’t be half as effective as it is were the actors not at the top of their game, and they all embrace the madness of Shaffer’s text with an infectious playfulness. The result is a production that is consistently laugh-out-funny with no pretentions about what it is. That the dialogue still has a richness and poetic lightness to it is mere adornment on what is a fabulous production.

Tickets for Black Comedy are available here.

In 1753, William Critchard, a footman, and Richard Arnold, a seaman, were hanged in the district of Redcliffe, Bristol, for "the detestable crime of sodomy”1, an act which carried a death sentence in England until as late as 1861. According to contemporary records, the two refused to repent on the gallows and, in an act of defiance against their persecution, Arnold is reported to have kissed Critchard's hand before both men were, in the euphemistic parlance of the time, "launched into eternity". Though theirs is just one of many tales of men who fell victim to the violent religiosity and oppression of the time, Critchard and Arnold's courage in their final moments is tinged with a gorgeous theatricality, and so it's easy to see what drew debut writer Jordan Luke Gage to their story.

Queer theatre harks to the past like few other genres, doing so not as a comfort but as a caution. Liberation was and still is a battlefield strewn with the broken bodies of those who came before us, and as the UK backslides ever more rapidly on LGBTQ+ rights, we would do well to remember this. Running through queer theatre there is however also a perverse and irresistible nostalgia for the surreptitious otherness that has since been sacrificed on the altars of acceptance and assimilation. The story of Critchard and Arnold - two men whose romance was swift and ultimately deadly - reminds us that yes, we’ve always been here, but also that our love used to be braver, and perhaps needs to become so again.

Alas, to tell a tale of courageous love well requires a courageous writer but, though he is very much an amiable stage presence whose intentions are surely worthy, Gage, who also stars as Critchard, plays it far too safe. The book is often sentimental and pandering, with some limp humour and clunky didaciticism woven through it, while the lyrics are overly earnest and riddled with clichés. Some of the songs - primarily, the solo numbers - are effective, and the vocals are decent if unremarkable, but it all feels like it’s still being workshopped, with no real sense of what the tone or the aesthetic is quite meant to be.

Likewise, Gage struggles with debut writer syndrome and, in trying to say so much, he ultimately ends up saying very little. Pare Redcliffe right back and strip out most of the superfluous characters - heck, take a big swing and turn it into a two-man show - and you have the makings of a half-decent one-act musical about queer love in the face of intolerance and injustice. The show (mostly) succeeds when Gage cuts out the noise and the distractions and focuses on the love between Critchard and Arnold, everyone else be damned, and so much of what doesn’t work here happens on the periphery of their story, which is why the show frustrates as much as it does.

But Gage does have promise as a writer. He can generate meaningful emotion and there’s a sweet naturalism to the interactions between the two lovers but he lacks the formal control to keep the piece from straining and buckling around him. The musicality, similarly, is ill-defined, with a number of forms and genres hurled into the pot in the hope that something palatable can be formed from the ingredients. And yet, there are a couple of songs that really do capture something interesting, even if an ironic but disastrously misjudged jaunty number about a hangman threatens to permanently derail the whole enterprise in the second act.

Gage himself is perfectly fine as Critchard and he has a pleasant enough voice, albeit one that is occasionally drowned out beneath the wave of breathy harmonies that the play resorts to whenever it strives for sincerity. His chemistry with Daniel Krikler, who was excellent in Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 at the Donmar Warehouse last year, is warm and affecting, though Krikler does a lot of the heavy lifting in the scenes when they're alone, and his vocals are tighter. Nonetheless, the two of them do have a likeable spark and it is a shame that Redcliffe dedicates a relatively small amount of time to the two of them.

Rebecca Lock, who plays Critchard's mother, is perhaps the best advertisement for what this show could have been and, with some further work, could yet be. More than anyone else on the stage, she understands how to navigate the shift from broad comedy to tragic melodrama, and her solo ballad in act two is a real triumph. She has the pipes, the comic timing and the ability to get to the emotional heart of the story in a way that everyone else struggles with.

At the end, we are reminded that, though this is a tragic tale from a bygone era, same sex love is still punishable by death in twelve countries across the globe, and it's that sense of injustice and urgency that the rest of the production lacks. Nonetheless, I found myself surrounded by people weeping loudly and had a Principal Skinner moment as I wondered whether I was so out of touch (no: it's the public who are wrong). I do think Gage has good intentions and there are flickers of promise here but this just doesn't work holistically, and that's largely down to a lack of rigour and control in the writing.

Critchard's slutty little glasses are great though.

Tickets for Redcliffe are available here.

Has any American playwright better captured how the male descendants of the Great Depression lashed themselves so wholly and uncompromisingly to their own poisonous pride that it ultimately devoured them? Miller’s most famous tragic heroes - Eddie Carbone, Joe Keller and Willy Loman - are, above all else, felled by their own stubborn insistence that their honour is sacrosanct. As the survivors of a decade of penury, when working men like their own fathers were rendered jobless and penniless and left to wallow in the shame of their failure to provide for their families, they saw how men of honour and dignity were hurled upon and buried beneath the scrapheap. Honour thus became the only currency on which they knew they could rely, for it was the one thing that couldn't be stolen from them without a fight.

Though the dramatic structure and tone of The Price differs from those of All My Sons, Death of a Salesman and A View from the Bridge, the two brothers whose conflict forms the heart of the narrative could easily fit into any of those plays, for they too value honour at the expense of everything else, including their relationship with one another. Like the best of Miller's protagonists, both men are righteous to a fault and haunted by the spectre of a father who seemed to lose everything, including his self-respect, in the 30s. Accordingly, they are determined to never let such a fate befall them, yet it is in their very obstinacy that said fate appears inevitable.

The title alludes to the moral and ethical dilemmas that drive the narrative; in effect, what price do we pay for the decisions we make and the values we hold? Set entirely in an attic full of old family memorabilia and sentimental junk, it’s a work about how the young men of the thirties have become stuck in time, beholden to ghosts of the past whose memories they have purposely distorted in order to make their lives all the more bearable. Vic, a police officer who resents his lot and blames his older brother, Walter, whom he hasn’t seen in well over a decade, for, as he perceives things, abandoning him and his father at the height of the Depression, meets with Gregory Solomon, an 89-year-old antique dealer, so that he can finally be rid of all of his father’s things. After a lot of back and forth between Solomon and Vic, Walter arrives and all of the wounds of the past are ripped open once again.

This is a strange text for Miller in that the first act is curiously light on substance, albeit intentionally so. There’s an element of farce to the proceedings as Solomon and Vic barter and haggle, often ineptly, while reminiscing about their lives through the hazy allure of nostalgia. Once Walter arrives however, the text becomes much more febrile and Miller finds himself very much in his comfort zone of angry, bitter men struggling to deal with all of the rage and regret that has been festering within them for decades. As the two brothers castigate each other for the slights they feel have been done to them, it becomes increasingly apparent that both men have created their own narratives of the past to justify to themselves how they exist in the present. Or, as Walter puts it: “we invent ourselves, Vic, to wipe out what we know.”

As with much of Miller’s work, the strength of The Price is in the dialogue which, though less poetic and rigorous than in his masterpieces, still bristles and rails against injustice and the poverty of a society that by 1968, with war waging in Vietnam and Nixon on the cusp of power, had become increasingly fractured by money. The parallels Miller draws between the misery of the 30s and the apparent recovery of the 60s imbue the text with a rage and a despondency that is well juxtaposed with the lightheartedness of the first act, and the claustrophobic setting, with the past towering over the characters and around an empty chair that could easily be filled with the ghost of the brothers’ father, creates a sense of real discord.

Extended for two weeks due to popular demand, The Price is the second of Miller’s lesser known texts to get a revival this year, following Jordan Fein’s production of Broken Glass at the Young Vic, which finished its run just over a month ago. Though Broken Glass was also a solid play, The Price feels closer to Miller at his most potent and profound. The performances are uniformly excellent and the messy set design creates a sense of disquiet that erupts into chaotic recriminations in second act, while Jonathan Munby’s direction leaves the actors ample room to properly become these broken characters.

Use the extra fortnight to see this if you can.

Tickets for The Price are available here.