Mowgli, a ferocious boy-child raised by wolves in the jungle, has been kicked out of the pack. He’s trying to figure out what to do next when he meets a mysterious creature from another world – or rather, another story.
MRS ORWELL – Old Red Lion Theatre
In 1949, George Orwell lived the final months of his life in University College Hospital due to a severe case of tuberculosis. Torn between an uncertain faith in a recovery and the consciousness of the approaching end, hoping to write again, he decided to marry Sonia Brownell, a young and beautiful magazine editor.
GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY – Old Vic Theatre
The music they listen to, and that which seeps from them with aching melancholy, is by Bob Dylan – written decades after the Great Depression ended. Combined with Conor McPherson’s earthy, Celtic script of imagery-laden prose, Girl From the North Country is not a musical.
ODD MAN OUT – Hope Theatre
A middle-aged, gay Welshman contemplates the English class he teaches in Hong Kong. Amongst the students is Windy, the Chinese woman with whom he shares his bed.
BECHDEL TESTING LIFE – The Bunker
Bechdel Theatre’s recent initiative Bechdel Testing Life asks women to send in recorded conversations from their everyday lives that pass the test. These are then given to playwrights, who use the conversations as jumping-off points for short plays.
THE MARRIAGE OF KIM K – Arcola Theatre
The show revolves around three couples; central are husband and wife Steven and Amelia, whose clashes over television choices mask deeper communication problems in their relationship. Amelia is a Kardashian fanatic and composer Steven loves Mozart, dismissing his lawyer wife’s obsession.
TORN APART (DISSOLUTION) – Hope Theatre
Tighter dialogue in the latter half and the addition of some physical theatre sequences give this update more sophistication, but a few of the original issues are still there. McNeill, who also directs, shows an inclination towards European theatre aesthetics, but he doesn’t quite go far enough.
HAMLET – West End
This Hamlet, freshly transferred to the West End from the Almeida, is a slick, beast of a production surpassing three hours. Undeniably contemporary, it does its best to smash the restrictions of the proscenium arch with a celebrity cast and achingly cool, Scandi/corporate design.
BLONDEL – Union Theatre
This 1983 show has some great numbers, but its frivolity and insubstantial book focusing on a personal journey rather than the larger political landscape is diminutive rather than powerfully sweeping.
I KNOW YOU OF OLD – Hope Theatre
Paying homage to Shakespeare’s genius but not slavishly binding themselves to it, Golem! sticks up two fingers at Shakespeare purists who, with quivering voices, clutch their pearls and gasp, “But the text!”
THE MISANTHROPE – Drayton Arms
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.
ANATOMY OF A SUICIDE – Royal Court
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.
THE ENCHANTED – Bunker Theatre
This is a pretty piece of expressionistic theatre that pleases the eyes and ears, but its favouring of poetic ambiguity and metaphor over concrete details and characterisation creates emotional distance. It’s difficult to find sympathy for a psychopath when their childhood trauma is nostalgically romanticised or vaguely alluded to when we see so little of them directly.
PONYBOY CURTIS VS. – The Yard
Trying to write about Chris Goode’s latest Ponyboy Curtis show vs. is like trying to fit a hurricane into a canning jar. The energy, love and freedom on the Yard’s stage is irrevocably alive and unrestrained, and trying to pin this one-of-a-kind butterfly onto a page kills it a little, or a lot.
PUNTS – Theatre503
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?
KILLOLOGY – Royal Court
Sion Daniel Young is Davey, a fifteen-year-old tearaway who roams the streets looking for trouble. A traumatic incident several years before, severe poverty and a well-intentioned but clueless mum means he channels his anger into violent bullying.
JAM – Finborough Theatre
There is always something unsettling and creepy about our memories of school. Almost everyone had “that” teacher who tends to reappear as a projection of our fears during stormy nights all through our life. But on those nights, teachers might find students in their nightmares too.
SNAPSHOT – Hope Theatre
James and Daniel are chalk and cheese, and very much in love. The unemployed photographer and Canary Wharf stockbroker are adorably domestic, but both are hiding secrets. When James’ uni mate and ex-girlfriend Olivia vengefully reveals one of them, this irrevocably opens the floodgates to the rest.
RICHARD III – Arcola Theatre
As the audience enters, Greg Hicks sits at a pub table on an otherwise bare stage. It’s impossible not to watch him until the house lights dim, and this opening sets the tone for the two and a half hours to come.
LOVE IN IDLENESS – West End
It’s the 1940s. Olivia Brown awaits the return of her 18-year-old son Michael, whom she has not seen for four years. Whilst he’s been away, his father has died and Olivia has found love with a successful arms manufacturer, Sir John Fletcher.