After a few years away, simple8 are returning with a new play later this year, but first they're reviving a former hit with a touring production of Moby Dick. I last saw Sebastian Armesto's adaptation of the book that set the template for the Great American Novel 11 years ago at the Arcola, but for the London leg this time it relocates to Wilton's Music Hall, a venue whose long history does include a connection to sailors and sea shanties, so seems a good match for a demented revenge drama that takes place mostly at sea. Ahab (Guy Rhys) captains a 19th century whaling ship, on a mission to hu ..read more

Leaving aside the fact that I've been unable to think of this as anything other than The Ballad of Hattie Jacques (and pretty much the first thing Jan said when he arrived at the theatre was that he's been exactly the same,) Samuel Adamson's The Ballad of Hattie and James comes with a good pedigree: The author returns to the Kiln having previously provided the venue with a mixed success in Wife, and the titular characters are played by Sophie Thompson and Charles Edwards. It's a moody, occasionally funny story of a friendship that goes very wrong but remains incredibly important throughout tw ..read more

As football plays have proven on multiple occasions, I don't have to be interested in a sport to enjoy a piece of theatre about it. Still, you've got your work cut out for you if the sport in question is cricket, even if it's not remotely the real subject of the story being told, like in Kate Attwell's Testmatch, set during a one-day match between England and India at the women's cricket World Cup. India are the bookies' favourites and have briefly managed to make a good start before rain stopped play; three women from each team are waiting together to hear if, or more likely when, the match ..read more

I still have strong memories of the Lyric Hammersmith successfully translating science fiction to the stage with the striking Solaris a few years ago, so while it's a different creative team tackling Philip K. Dick, who inspired a number of the most successful sci-fi movies of all time, I was still optimistic that a venue willing to give the genre a chance would be a good choice to continue the experiment. Minority Report is quite a different proposition from the moody spookiness of Solaris, with the added challenges of a lot of action scenes, and Max Webster's production deals with them with ..read more

With the exception of Oliver Exclamation Mark and umpteen Christmas Carols, the works of Charles Dickens (Chickens to his friends) have largely resisted the musical theatre treatment. Ben Power (book and lyrics) and PJ Harvey (music and lyrics) haven't been deterred by the idea that there might be a reason for this, so have tackled Our Mutual Friend, well-known among Dickens' novels as being... definitely one of them. Retitled London Tide, this stage version frames the story as being that of two women who never meet until the very end, but are both affected when a body is fished out of the Th ..read more

Richard Jones' production of Machinal was originally seen at the Theatre Royal Bath, something that's immediately apparent as Hyemi Shin's set clearly originates somewhere much smaller than the Old Vic: The sickly yellow wedge is very appropriate for conveying the claustrophobia of the story, a bit less ideal for the sightlines as it gets lost somewhere in the middle of the huge darkened stage, squeezed behind a pillar from where we were sitting*. Sophie Treadwell's 1928 play is considered a masterpiece of expressionism, something that's referenced in particular in the opening scenes as a you ..read more

Writer-director Bijan Sheibani has worked with Irfan Shamji multiple times before, so you can see why he'd take advantage of that working relationship to cast the extraordinary actor in his latest play as well, putting him at the centre of an intense mental breakdown in The Cord. It's an evening that put me in mind of The Father, in the sense that it's a brilliant evening of theatre I'm glad I caught, but not necessarily one I'd want to put myself through again. Ash (Shamji) is a new father, whose wife Anya (Eileen O'Higgins) is still recovering from a birth with some complications, but apart ..read more

Richard Nelson's An Actor Convalescing in Devon, about a Shakespearean actor who lost part of his jaw and soft palate to cancer and had to learn how to speak again, was written especially for Paul Jesson - a Shakespearean actor who lost part of his jaw and soft palate to cancer and had to learn how to speak again. The other elements of his story borrow from a variety of other sources and themes though, perhaps too many for a short monologue. Jesson's character, simply called The Actor, is waiting to board a train to Exeter and then on to a friend's country cottage for a long weekend. If he's ..read more

Like Appropriate, the last Branden Jacobs-Jenkins play I saw, The Comeuppance also takes a mainstay of American storytelling and gives it a gentle but noticeable tweak. This time it's the high school reunion, and the triumphs and disappointments that hang over people meeting again after years apart. Although in this case the people we meet have stayed in touch to varying degrees, and not just because these reunions have been happening every five years - the upcoming 20th anniversary is the first one successful artist Emilio (Anthony Welsh) has actually returned for, which may be part of the r ..read more

It's been a while since I decided I was better off cutting my losses and leaving a show at the interval (in fact this is my first time post-Panny D) but physical theatre company Flabbergast's take on A Midsummer Night's Dream did nothing to make me want to return. As a result I can't review the show as I didn't see all of it, but I can say the relentless clowning style of performance put me off from the start. The blurb says the company has a respectful approach to the text, and I'm sure they do, as the bombastic performance by whoever happens to be speaking it at any given time is generally ..read more