Exchange Theatre sets The Misanthrope in a contemporary newsroom full of gossip, affairs, backstabbing and cocaine-fueled all-nighters. Alceste loathes the way his colleagues behave, but fancies the flirtatious Celimene in spite of his prejudices. His jealousy and inability to be polite to his colleagues causes a litany of issues that play out over their broadcasts, eventually leading to his lonely downfall.
Politics is a veritable pick n’ mix of source material for playwrights, and new works inspired by Trump and Brexit abound. No doubt we’ll soon see a wave of hot takes on the debacle that continues to be the general election. Writer Matthew Campling attempts it with his rapid response work set in Boston, Lincolnshire, where Leave votes had the highest national percentage. Framed by a local couple and their new neighbour, a city boy who wants a quiet, weekend pad in the countryside, The English Heart attempts to be a fast-paced, political, sex farce but doesn’t manage to settle on a political metaphor or writing style.
By guest critic Maeve Campbell
The audience enter a Globe theatre transformed into ‘The Club of the Unloved’, populated by a chorus of anorak wearing, bird-watching members. We are serenaded by a virtuosic Roy Orbison cover, foreshadowing the production’s impeccable soundtrack, performed by a slick live band. What follows is a show that is silly, scrappy and homemade looking, and at the same time unfeasibly magical.
Based on a medieval folk tale, The Cornish King Mark has intentions to marry Yseult, sister of his defeated Irish enemy. He sends his loyal French knight Tristan to kidnap her. But he’s sexy and she’s sexy, and it’s love at first sip of a magical potion. Here ensues a messy love triangle and an anguished discovery of betrayal.
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by guest critic Maeve Ryan
I Hear You And Rejoice is a tribute to the power of the single storyteller. Lighting, costume and staging are simple, revealing the power of the skilled actor. The result is a joyful play full of sentimentality that is also hugely funny.
This is the followup to the much-loved The Man In The Woman’s Shoes, also written and performed by Mikel Murfi. Both plays began their journey following a research period interviewing older people in Murfi’s native Sligo. Having performed the play back to the very people he had interviewed for inspiration, The Man In The Woman’s Shoes debuted at The Hawkswell in Sligo. It has since toured extensively to audiences at home and abroad.
by guest critic Simona Negretto
When a trauma shatters the crystalline equilibrium and accepted dynamics of a family, is the tendency for the generations that follow to repeat it inescapably or can a single individual react against that?
Alice Birch’s new work, Anatomy of a Suicide, courageously investigates how the suicide of a mother affects the lives of a daughter and a granddaughter, haunts their own motherhood (or causing the lack of it) and their relationships. Simultaneously staging the three intertwined stories of Carol, Anna and Bonnie during three different eras – the 70s, the 90s and the near future – the play ambitiously creates a multidimensional and multi-level world engaging the audience and the actors in an extraordinary and overwhelming tour de force.
York and Arden are two men on America’s death row waiting to die. An investigator, known to the prisoners as The Lady, works night and day to save their lives. The similarly unnamed chaplain does the same to save their souls. As the two piece together the pasts of the men about to meet their deaths, a physical theatre ensemble and extracts from Rene Denfeld’s poetic novel The Enchanted creates a dreamlike, romanticised view of poverty-stricken rural America and the killers it breeds.
by guest critic Willa O’Brian
Deciding what is best is a tricky thing to do. It’s particularly difficult if you’re trying to do what is best for someone else. How do you know if you’re doing the right thing? Is your aim and end admirable but your means slightly suspect? It’s a constant balancing act and Punts attempts to tackle this fundamental question in myriad ways. Jack is twenty-five and has a learning disability so severe that he lives with his parents and needs constant supervision, or so his mother believes. But it’s difficult growing up under the wing of so protective a maternal eye.
The staff at this scuzzy, traditional American-style diner in Birmingham may not be best, but they’re happily set in their ways. Eddie, his daughter Chantal, her boyfriend PJ and part time waitress Jean are doing just fine…until Marika turns up and wants to change everything. It’s a trope that’s been used in stories throughout time – a mysterious foreign woman arrives and positively impacts her community whilst evading questions about her past. When the truth is revealed, she disappears, leaving the world irrevocably changed in her wake. Combined with snippets of original music, plenty of comedy and influenced by Rocky Horror, contemporary immigration politics, romcoms and a variety of other sources, Roller Diner is a wonderfully silly yet touching testament to the power of outsider’s fresh perspective.
I have a fairly robust constitution and am not particularly squeamish, but Gary Owen’s latest had me trying not to be sick on Meg Vaughan’s bag on my right, or the empty seats to my left and in front of me. They were empty because some people walked out in the first half, and others didn’t return after the interval. That’s not to say Killology isn’t brilliant – it absolutely is. But the brutal story about fractured father/son relationships, toxic masculinity and revenge is bloody hard to watch.
Regardless of your thoughts on European theatre’s influence on our island’s stages, it’s impossible to deny it’s happening. Unicorn Theatre is one venue that isn’t shying away from international influence and experimentation in theatre for children and young people – they’re embracing it. Work produced and booked here challenges expectations of the genre and doesn’t patronise its young audiences.
Dutch company Theatre Artemis are no exception to their ethos. Understated clowning, public failure and live music create a metatheatrical world of mediocrity that is meant to be challenged. A musician supports a showman that claims to know it all, but who really can only partially list items in categories like ‘colours’ and ‘weather’, and bungles up counting in several languages. A hapless stagehand tries to help when not interrupting with offstage crashes and bangs.
The Play's The Thing UK 