ajhlovestheatre

AFTER THE ACT

by Billy Barrett and Ellice Stevens

music by Frew

directed by Billy Barrett

Royal Court Theatre, London – until 14 June 2025

running time: 2 hours including interval 

https://royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/after-the-act/

Billy Barrett and Ellice Stevens’s show, revised from its original 2023 outing (no pun intended) at the New Diorama, at the Royal Court briefly following a national tour, feels like a throwback in more ways than one. Not just to the later years of the twentieth century and the grim (for many gay people) two decades that followed the passing of the Conservatives’s controversial Section 28 banning the “promotion” of anything to do with homosexuality, but also to the agitprop political theatre of Joan Littlewood and the issue-driven work of companies like Gay Sweatshop and Monstrous Regiment.

Described as a musical, After The Act is really more of a collage of verbatim accounts of effects and experiences triggered by the infamous bill and recreations of public figures of the time (look out for the disco Maggie Thatcher, and a re-enactment of the lesbian activists storming the BBC newsroom while Sue Lawley struggled valiantly to continue broadcasting). Barrett’s production for Breach Theatre features a cast of four, including co-creator Stevens who has a wonderful gift for deadpan comedy and finding the emotional truth in her various monologues, and has a deliberately makeshift, almost improvisational, tone and look.

Bethany Wells’s set, with it’s gym climbing frame, neon-lit vaulting tables, and school-style benches, adds to the overall feel of a Theatre-in-Education retelling of this lamentable slice of queer history. So does the performing style which has a chummy broadness for much of the show. None of this feels inappropriate actually, given how ignorant some young gay people seem to be about the struggles of their antecedents (I’ll always remember how mind-blown several youthful members of the community were when It’s A Sin first hit our TV screens), and After The Act often compensates in energy and interest what it lacks in finesse.

In all honesty, a production this rough around the edges sometimes looks a little odd in a pros arch theatre, even one as determinedly egalitarian as the Royal Court. The singing is cacophonous and enthusiastic rather than accurate, similarly the execution of Sung-Im Her’s overused choreography. That said, the show is dealing with a messy tranche of recent history, a time where queer people had to fight hard and shout loud to be heard, so the general approach does work. We are left in no doubt as to how much was at stake and also the very real human cost of such unfeeling, wrongheaded homophobic legislation, and the weaponisation of the AIDS crisis, despite the script often being hysterically, camply funny.

Frew’s synth-heavy music, by turns thrashy or haunting and portentous, occasionally pretty rousing, does a wonderful job of evoking the late 1980s/early 1990s. If there are no memorable tunes as such, it still feels like an accurate aural depiction of the era when Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, New Order et al were in their heyday. Barrett and Stevens mash up testimonials, some heartbreaking and others comical, with depictions of mass demonstrations (quite an achievement with a cast of four, but we get the gist) and scenes from House of Commons debates that look jawdroppingly archaic viewed through a 2025 lens.

The most interesting sections, and the ones with probably the most emotional resonance, come after the interval. Zachary Willis and Nkara Stephenson are deeply moving as fragile youngsters blighted by the ramifications of clause 28, Willis also excels as a youthful demo participant at the epic event in Manchester’s Albert Square, suddenly, joyfully aware this is the largest concentration of gays he’s ever encountered in his young life (“there are so many people here that I could potentially have sex with”). 

Stevens is lowkey devastating as a P.E. teacher who spots one of her students in a gay bar at the height of the madness but later deals with the situation in a less than admirable way. These individual speeches have such power that it’s a shame the staging doesn’t always let the words carry their full weight, instead having the rest of the cast perform infuriatingly distracting slo-mo P.E.-type moves while the main actor speaks. While it’s fun to have the versatile Ericka Posadas abseiling down the length of the proscenium in tribute to the women who infiltrated Parliament, some bits of the production would benefit from being a little less busy.

Reservations aside, After The Act is an impressive achievement, taking something dark and cruel, and turning it into a piece of theatre that educates, delights and vitalises. It’s scrappy and stroppy for sure, but for all the paraphernalia and camp, it never trivialises the struggle of the gay rights movement and its allies, and it’s pretty powerful when it needs to. Perhaps most telling is a moment near the end where Stevens’s teacher Catherine points out “I absolutely think this era that we are in now is really the Section 28 of the trans community”….now that is a real gut punch.

THIS IS MY FAMILY 

book and music by Tim Firth

directed by Vicky Featherstone

Southwark Playhouse Elephant, London – until 12 July 2025

running time: 2 hours 20 minutes including interval 

https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/this-is-my-family/

Not many British writers working regularly in musical theatre are committed to putting “average” people on stage and letting the limelight give them a sheen of magic, but it’s something Tim Firth has made a specialty out of. His books for Our House (still unsurpassed when it comes to jukebox tuners) and the stage adaptation of Calendar Girls are examples of this and are full of heart, humour and truth. First seen in Sheffield in 2013, then again in a 2019 revision at Chichester, this cute, low key confection is a sort of apotheosis of this preoccupation with white, straight, fundamentally ordinary folks going about their lives. 

However, where Our House and Calendar Girls (previously The Girls) had the music of Madness and Gary Barlow respectively, Firth has provided his own for This Is My Family and, despite the ravishing arrangements by Caroline Humphris and the top flight work of Natalie Pound’s band, it’s one of the weakest elements in what is otherwise an engaging show. Firth’s lyrics are taut, conversational, funny, touching when they need to be, but his music is bland and recitative-heavy, only occasionally flourishing into anything approaching a melody. 

This means that the show doesn’t really rise above the level of superior sitcom with added singing. The writing is so sharp though, full of love and with a clear-eyed dissection of family dynamics, that this often feels like more than enough. Vicky Featherstone’s production contains a lot to enjoy. The performances are absolutely lovely. All six cast members inhabit their roles with truth and commitment.

Michael Jibson, who got his first big stage break as the unforgettable hero of Firth’s 2002 Olivier winner Our House, is Steve, just turned 41 and in the grip of a midlife crisis, hurling himself into projects like rollerblading or turning his garden rockery into a hot tub, while dreaming of emigrating to the UAE. Jibson plays him as on the permanent verge of fury, so that when moments of sweetness or genuine emotion peep through, it’s genuinely affecting. His marriage to Gemma Whelan’s feisty, likeable Yvonne has lost its lustre, a situation exacerbated by the arrival of May, Steve’s increasingly vulnerable elderly mother who inadvertently nearly set fire to her own home.

Gay Soper invests May with a heart piercing combination of confused desolation and joie de vivre, sometimes within seconds of each other. In writing and performance, this is a pretty devastating portrait of a failing mind, and also a rare example of the score powerfully serving the story, as Soper gets to reprise variants of a folk song May has known, presumably since childhood, each version giving a clue to her mental state. 

Victoria Elliott has fun as Yvonne’s outrageous, freewheeling sister, although the role feels a bit underwritten. Similarly, Luke Lambert does a great job of making sense of Steve and Yvonne’s older child Matt, written and designed as a bewilderingly unlikely goth/druid attention seeker, who feels very much like a middle aged person’s idea of what a rebellious teen looks like. 

The lynchpin of the whole cast is Nancy Allsop as thirteen year old Nicky, observing and commenting on her family. She’s incredibly sweet but never sappy, and totally real; it’s a winning performance, and the conduit between the audience and her sometimes highly irascible relatives. Amy Ball CDG and director Featherstone have done a remarkable job assembling a cast of actors who authentically look, feel and sound like they could be one family.

Chloe Lamford’s wendy house set undergoes a satisfying transformation just before the interval and Featherstone’s staging makes some of the best use of Southwark’s Elephant space that I have seen to date. The singing voices overall are rawer and less polished than one is often used to hearing in musicals but they work in this context of regular people singing, and the transition from speech to song is frequently imperceptible. Not an actor known for doing musicals, Whelan’s phrasing is particularly impressive.

Not much happens in This Is My Family, but it’s broadly relatable and the emotion of it sort of creeps up on you, plus it’s often laugh-out-loud funny. It also feels like one of the most quintessentially British musicals I’ve seen in quite some time. There’s nothing about it that screams essential viewing and I could’ve done without the treacly ending, but its heart is in the right place, and it’s generally a very nice couple of hours in the theatre.

RADIANT BOY – A HAUNTING 

by Nancy Netherwood

directed by Júlia Levai

Southwark Playhouse Borough – The Little, London – until 14 June 2025

running time: 1 hour 50 minutes including interval 

https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/radiant-boy/

If you’ve seen a fair amount of theatre over the years, it’s increasingly rare to come across a play that feels like a true original, but here’s one. Certainly writer Nancy Netherwood uses elements of existing genres – ghost story, thriller, queer coming-of-age tale, kitchen sink drama – but she fuses those elements into something unique and, yes, haunting. Radiant Boy – A Haunting, premiering in a ferociously well acted production by Júlia Levai for Cloudburst theatre company, is a spellbinding piece of theatrical storytelling that has the glow of the familiar but refracted in multiple different directions that render it fresh and compelling. It’s also, when it needs to be, thoroughly creepy.

Young Russell (Stuart Thompson, utterly brilliant) returns home to early 1980s North East England from his music college course in London after an unspecified incident. His mother Maud (a grimly convincing Wendy Nottingham) is wary of him, referring back to a time when there was a major, irreversible change in nine year old Russell and, as any concerned mum might do (!), calls in an exorcist. Is Russell actually possessed or is his distracted nature and superhuman ability to control the lighting at moments of high stress a manifestation of the sexuality that Maud is struggling to come to terms with (this is the ‘80s remember)? If it sounds preposterous on paper, the shuddering atmosphere of foreboding that director Levai and her design team conjure up, along with the unhistrionic truth in the acting and Netherwood’s snappy, spare dialogue, means that you buy into it pretty much immediately. 

Thompson, making good on the promise he showed in the Almeida Spring Awakening and the Globe Ghosts, is simply extraordinary. His Russell is a beguiling mixture of defensiveness, cynicism and melancholy, shot through with a sly wit and a louche, languorous physicality. The sort of human who is used to being the smartest, most sensitive person in the room and is resigned to the isolation that brings, it’s a richly textured portrayal. 

Although the writing for her role possesses less colours, and has a backstory monologue in the second half which is the only time where Netherwood’s work gets a tad clunky, Nottingham is also doing very fine, honest work as his bewildered, disapproving mother. Ben Allen skilfully straddles the line between reassuring and ambiguous as the “spiritual therapist” Maud has enlisted to help her son. Renée Lamb, a performer I was mainly familiar with through multiple musical theatre credits, is pretty sensational in a dual role (or is it?!) as Steph, the college friend instrumental in emotionally unlocking Russell, and an all-consuming presence with far-reaching consequences on his life. 

Lamb gets to sing here too (Russell and Steph are music students), and when she does it’s magical. Thompson also has a cracking voice and the juxtaposition of eerie folk and evocative 1980s pop is very powerful. Plus any play that includes a section fangirling over the vocals of Alison Moyet, as we get here, is one I am on board with. The musical elements throughout are captivating and discombobulating, whether acoustic or filtered through the imaginative sound design by Patch Middleton.

Technically, Levai’s accomplished, engrossing production is pretty much flawless. Tomas Palmer’s set encompasses a conventional living room and the sense of being a liminal space, both naturalistic and not quite real, and Lucia Sánchez Roldan’s lighting is suitably unsettling. I’m not sure the play really needs the interval as it briefly decompresses us from the tension and magic, and the script really isn’t that long.

It’s not fair to give away too much about what happens, not that Netherwood ever gives us specific answers which may prove frustrating to some, but at its most potent, it feels as though something truly elemental is being unleashed in that tiny space. Chilling, thrilling stuff and the chance to see one of the most exciting stage actors of this generation at close quarters. Book before it sells out.

THE FROGS 

A comedy written in 405BC by Aristophanes, freely adapted by Burt Shevelove, even more freely adapted by Nathan Lane

music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim 

directed by Georgie Rankcom 

Southwark Playhouse Borough – The Large, London – until 28 June 2025

running time: 2 hours 20 minutes including interval 

https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/the-frogs/

Originally conceived as an entertainment to be performed in the swimming pool at Yale University (where the original chorus of amphibians included Meryl Streep and Sigourney Weaver), The Frogs mainly features as a footnote to Stephen Sondheim’s extraordinary career. On the basis of this enthusiastic but exhausting revival by Georgie Rankcom, it’s not hard to see why. 

More of a sort of Ancient Greek vaudeville than a conventional musical, the emphasis is on the comic and the cerebral as the God of wine and drama Dionysus heads off to the underworld to bring back an inspirational playwright (in the original Aristophanes it was Euripides, in Burt Shevelove’s belaboured adaptation it’s George Bernard Shaw) in a bid to save an increasingly messed-up mankind from itself. While it’s kinda comforting to see that people haven’t really changed across the centuries, the anything-for-a-joke style of the writing (and this version is further packed with anachronisms) means that it never feels like anything much is at stake. 

Dan Buckley, a tremendously gifted musical comedy performer, works hard as Dionysus but is compromised by some writing and comic schtick, and gets little chance to show off his glorious voice. At least he has bucket loads of charm; as his sidekick slave Xanthias, American star Kevin McHale, formerly of TV’s Glee, seems to have been given only two playing notes – smug and camp – both of which he strikes relentlessly to nullifying effect. 

Elsewhere, the cast perform various amusing cameos – Martha Pothen as a comic Irish-accented GBS, Carl Patrick’s Charon, lugubrious but manic transporter of the dead Charon, Bart Lambert as a grave Shakespeare, Victoria Scone (one of several guest stars) as fruitily funny Pluto, overseer of Hades – but each feels like talented performers bowling his/her/their individual bit at the audience with no coherence or sense of being part of a bigger whole. Joaquin Pedro Valdes fares best as a genuinely hilarious himbo Herakles, Dionysus’s fitness obsessed half brother.

The score is a stately, witty combination of Broadway-style showtune and portentous grandeur – very well played by Yshani Perinpanayagam’s excellent quintet – but there’s nothing here that approaches vintage Sondheim, save for the engaging ‘Gods of the Theatre’ opening number and a joyfully off-kilter second act paean to the glories of wine. Neither the reasonably enjoyable songs nor the energised commitment of the cast are sufficient to compensate for Shevelove’s book being a colossal bore. The second act, dominated by a boxing match-style quote-off between Shaw and Shakespeare that feels like pulling teeth, is interminable.

The titular frogs, of which Dionysus is inexplicably terrified, appear only once for a single number (good luck with getting that piercing “Brekekekèx” out of your head after seeing this) and are costumed here by Libby Todd as colourful panto-esque figures, looking more like hula dancers crossed with aliens rather than amphibians. The visual aesthetic of Todd’s other costumes and curtained set suggests gaudy on a budget – it’s not particularly exciting but it basically works – with Samuel Biondolillo’s lighting doing a lot of visual heavy-lifting.

Matt Nicholson’s choreography skilfully and strikingly combines a variety of showbiz tropes to ensure that the musical numbers look good. Rankcom’s go-for-broke, wide-swinging directorial style works well enough in individual moments but never coheres into anything distinctive or satisfying, and the broad slapstick feels rootless which mitigates against the humour, and the determination to inject modern high camp at every available opportunity becomes tiresome. The cast is strong but the overall effect is one of self-indulgent mugging and little detail. 

At one point, Dionysus, in his bid to save humanity through theatre, states “we have to appeal to their hearts as well as their minds” and the irony here is that is precisely what The Frogs doesn’t do. It’s a show very much up in its own head, and without any human warmth to cling on to, it becomes tedious. It’s a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster of a show, having been reworked and expanded several times, but the lack of real engagement and purpose starts to really register across a playing time of over two hours (the original was a fleet one act). A 2017 revival at Jermyn Street at least invested it with a little charm but this version, stuck between satire and would-be lavish musical, feels mainly brash yet ponderous. One for Sondheim completists only.

THE CRUCIBLE 

by Arthur Miller 

directed by Ola Ince

Shakespeare’s Globe, London – until 12 July 2025

running time: 3 hours including interval 

https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/whats-on/the-crucible/

As long as human beings are prepared to inflict grievous damage on each other due to mutual incomprehension and mistrust, Arthur Miller’s powerful witch hunt drama, a thinly veiled allegory of the McCarthy anti-Communist trials happening in America at the time it was written, will never not feel relevant. That is the genius but also the tragedy of The Crucible, now being presented for the first time at the Globe in an unadorned but mostly effective staging by Ola Ince.

Miller’s evocation of a puritanical 17th century Massachusetts community in the simultaneous grip of religious fervour and mass paranoia remains potent, sitting well in the ‘wooden O’ of the Globe,  even if this production never quite reaches the level of edge-of-your-seat tension that this play is capable of achieving. Ince lets the drama speak for itself which, when the piece is as good as this one, is hardly a problem. Her approach is more solid than inspired perhaps but she presents a commendably clear reading of the text, alive equally to the gritty humour in it and the sinister manipulation by sexually advanced Abigail Williams (a genuinely terrifying Hannah Saxby) of the other local young girls and by extension, the community as a whole.

The coolness in the marriage of John Proctor (Gavin Drea), the farmer with whom Abigail has had an adulterous dalliance, and his wife Elizabeth (a flinty, affecting Phoebe Pryce) is made abundantly clear from the get-go, the two of them sharing the same space but divided by an ocean of unspoken feeling and resentment. More than in other interpretations I’ve seen, these Proctors seem likely targets for a marital wedge to be driven between them by a dynamic, implacable go-getter like Saxby’s ripe, fervent Abigail. The sexual charge between her and Drea’s tormented, handsome John is palpable: note the way places her head on his chest at their first stolen moment alone together while he does nothing to propel her from him.

The accents are distractingly disparate: the Proctors are Irish, Abigail and her cohorts are West Country, Joanne Howarth’s wonderfully dry Rebecca Nurse is Welsh, there’s a bit of RP thrown in, some Estuary accents…it’s not a massive issue but the ear sometimes takes a while to tune in, especially in the open air, and it dissipates the sense of community somewhat. Ince’s production favours a declaratory style which often sees characters placed on opposing sides of the Globe’s wide stage bellowing at each other which gets a bit repetitive, although it fundamentally works for much of the second half where the play effectively becomes a courtroom drama.

Drea’s John has the gruff belligerence of a soul sure of his own mind but less so of his  body, and finds the raw grief in Proctor’s final roar of self-assertion (“How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!”) He’s a good man in many ways, but he’s also a bully, because he’s living in a time and place that made it acceptable to be both. Steve Furst is chilling but intensely human as his nemesis Reverend Parris, and Jo Stone-Fewings delivers a beautifully detailed, compassionate account of Reverend Hale, sent in to sort out the mess but unable to reconcile the evidence of his own eyes with the partisan stances of the church and the law. 

Gareth Snook’s presiding deputy governor Danforth is another vivid creation, oleaginous and determined but prone to sudden moments of unsettling rage. Bethany Wooding sensitively but boldly captures the vacillating levels of power and assurance in Mary Warren, the Proctor’s servant who tastes freedom and agency but lacks the strength to follow through with it.

This is a play in part about the fallibility of the patriarchy, as thrillingly considered in the current Broadway hot ticket John Proctor Is The Villain, and it’s interesting to note that most of the creative team on this production is female. The solely female-driven moments, unscripted but striking, such as when the young women frolic with excited abandon on the top level of Amelia Jane Hankin’s rustic, workmanlike set after being freed from interrogation, or the imprisoned wives all accused of dealings with the devil appear in the same spot later on in pious, desperate prayer, stick in the memory. 

Renell Shaw’s underscoring lends an extra layer of tension, individual words and moments accorded stark significance by a terse musical frisson from Hilary Bersey’s five piece band. Crucially, the music never feels superfluous.

This may not be a production for the ages, particularly given that the universally acclaimed National Theatre version was only a couple of years ago, but it is one that undoubtedly gets to the heart of Miller’s troubling tale. The final, uncompromising scene between Drea’s John and Pryce’s Elizabeth is as moving here as it has ever been. The look of this staging may be robustly of the late 1600s in which it is set, but the concerns and the warnings in The Crucible still speak urgently to us today. 

THE DEEP BLUE SEA 

by Terence Rattigan

directed by Lindsay Posner

Theatre Royal Haymarket, London – until 21 June 2025

running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval

https://trh.co.uk/whatson/the-deep-blue-sea/

Terence Rattigan had been in the theatrical wilderness for decades when Czech director Karel Reisz staged a coruscating production of his 1952 The Deep Blue Sea at the Almeida starring Penelope Wilton. The year was 1993 and Wilton was a revelation as Hester Collyer, the middle aged, upper class woman who threw away a privileged life as a judge’s wife for the thrill of a liaison with a former RAF pilot years her junior. But then so was the whole production, unlocking the deep wells of emotion and despair underneath the civilised elegance of the language and igniting a fresh new appraisal of Rattigan’s body of work. 

If Lindsay Posner’s Theatre Royal Bath production, first seen last year and now in London for a limited season at the Haymarket, feels less astonishing than that earlier reinvention, it’s still, on closer inspection, subversive in its own way. From the moment the curtain first rises on Peter McKintosh’s drab, detailed bedsit – all mismatched furniture, peeling wallpaper and hideous drapes, the kind of room where hope goes to die – it’s clear this is at least going to look like a conventional Deep Blue Sea.  

Cleaving nearer to the original spirit of the text than the expressionistic, expansive Carrie Cracknell revival for the National in 2016 which featured the late, great Helen McCrory as a sex pot, drama queen Hester, it’s clear that Posner trusts the play. So he should, as it’s an out-and-out masterpiece, but he still manages to cast some fascinating new lights onto it.

For starters, Freddie Page, the test pilot for whom Hester abandoned her life of privilege and comfort, frequently played as a sort of youthful homme fatal, is significantly older than usual. Hadley Fraser, who previously played the role opposite Nancy Carroll nearly a decade ago in Chichester, is certainly attractive and, when required, charming, but his maturity also lends a chilling edge to Freddie’s less sensitive treatment of Hester: casual carelessness becomes cruelty, and it feels all the more shocking. Similarly, the character’s excessive drinking, if not excused at least explained by the man’s youth in more conventional readings, seems more nihilistic, more hell bent on oblivion when Freddie is older. It also makes the dynamic between him and Hester, where she at times seems more mother figure than lover, all the more twisted. Fraser pierces through to the self-hatred at the core of this handsome loser more than any other actor I’ve seen in the role.

Tamsin Greig delivers a richly textured, multi-layered Hester Collyer. Every inch the vicar’s daughter who became a perfect society cohort, she’s a people pleaser who appals even herself when she gives full rein to desires and urges she’s kept locked away. She finds great power in stillness, but also lets us see Hester thinking on her feet as she manoeuvres an increasingly tortuous emotional life with a combination of manipulation, stealth and sheer desperation. 

Greig uses several voices, all connected:  there’s the mellifluous, cello-like sound of an urbane woman at home with small talk and dinner parties, and able to deal maturely and squarely with her lovelorn, needy QC husband (a beautiful performance by Nicholas Farrell). Then there’s the slightly infantilised ‘little girl’ voice Hester has probably employed as a palliative and a buffer since youth, and, finally, when the stakes get really high, and control and composure have slipped away, a banshee-like screech that denotes a woman at the very edge of reason, which is truly horrible to hear. It’s a riveting account of the role, in charge but generous to the other actors, full of subtle details and unexpected choices, reconfirming Greig as one of this country’s greatest working actresses.

The first half runs acts one and two together which makes it punishingly long, despite the quality of the production and performances. The second half is utterly compelling though. Greig finds a heroic, classical intensity and strength in Hester’s final dealings with the feckless Freddie and is almost unbearably moving as she resolves, at the urging of Finbar Lynch’s unflinching, brilliant struck-off Doctor, to turn her back on her suicidal urges and live without any hope but also “without despair”. Lynch is quietly astounding: dry as dust but full of kindness and a rich inner life.

Selina Cadell finds impressive colours and nuances in the cheerfully gossipy landlady, a role that in lesser hands can easily slip into standardised ‘Cockney char’ territory. There’s lovely, period-authentic work from Preston Nyman and Lisa Ambalavanar as the younger couple residing in the boarding house and who become inadvertently drawn into Hester and Freddie’s drama. Often played either too clipped or too hearty, these two get it just right, she betraying a surprising fragility as she confides in Hester that she cannot bear to be left alone, and he demonstrating a pretty shoddy attitude to women as he confesses to an affair.

Powerful as this revival is, there are moments where one can’t help but wonder how much more potently it must have played in Bath’s Ustinov Studio, where it originated. The ornate, chocolate box-y Haymarket inevitably keeps us at a slight remove, despite the vividness and authority of the performances. Where this production excels is in creating a world where ‘stiff upper lip’ behaving well is the norm, and so when the raw, anguished pain breaks through, it’s all the more shocking and devastating, like a cluster bomb of mess and shame detonating at high brow tea party. It may be defiantly unfashionable but work of this quality unquestionably ages well.

THE MAD ONES

by Kait Kerrigan and Bree Lowdermilk

directed by Emily Susanne Lloyd

The Other Palace Studio, London – until 1 June 2025

running time: 2 hours including interval 

https://theotherpalace.co.uk/the-mad-ones/

American teenager Samantha Brown is haunted. A super-bright young woman with an unconventional but strangely admirable mom, she lost her best friend Kelly in a car accident and that colours the way she views the world. Kelly is everywhere for Samantha: a cajoling, supporting, sometimes mocking, occasionally furious, presence. That’s the basic premise for Kat Kerrigan and Bree Lowdermilk’s emotionally rich, deceptively sophisticated chamber musical and if on paper it might appear mawkish and a little clichéd, in practice and on stage it proves anything but.

Originally seen off-Broadway in 2017, The Mad Ones examines grief and the bonds that transcend mere mortality, while also addressing the growing pains every young person has to deal with, and the sexual ambiguity in a relationship between two women who love each other unconditionally. It’s funny and heartfelt, but the overall tone is one of regret and wonder, but with the freshness and energy of youth.

The transitions from script to musical numbers are almost seamless, and when the characters sing with full chest, as they often do, it’s because they’re in that musical theatre nirvana where emotions can only be expressed in song because the spoken word no longer suffices. There’s a lot of gorgeous multiple harmony belting going on here but, unlike with numerous contemporary musicals (including The Great Gatsby, the Broadway juggernaut now at the Coliseum and with which Kerrigan is also creatively involved), this feels entirely organic and true to the story being told rather than just bravura vocals for their own sake. 

The storytelling is non-linear and sometimes a little ponderous. Samantha (Dora Gee, winningly sincere and vocally impressive) appraises her young life story in retrospect as her memories get swirled up and randomly dissipated which can get a bit hard to follow on first viewing. Gee is so lovable you’ll want to stick with her as Samantha tries to sort out whether to explore her academic possibilities (she’s got an offer at prestigious Yale University) or set off on the track of adventurous self discovery, as prescribed by Courtney Stapleton’s sensationally sung, hard-to-resist Kelly. Even if the narrative is sometimes confusing, it’s impossible not to care about these vibrant young women.

Another marvellous creation is Beverly, Samantha’s uber-feminist, neurotic mom, played with a delightful mixture of eccentricity and authority by Thea-Jo Wolfe. She gets possibly the best number, a stunning second act solo ‘Miles And Miles’ about the differences in the futures mapped out for women versus men (“the glass cracks in the ceiling and women swell with pride / but when a woman breaks the rules / the world’s not on her side / The wheels of change / they move so goddamn slow”). It takes the breath away with its clarity of intent and musical sophistication, and it’s delivered thrillingly but with rock solid truth by Wolfe. The acting throughout has that same sense of truth, these feel like real people and because of that, the show becomes increasingly more moving as it goes along.

Thematically and musically, The Mad Ones is somewhat reminiscent of Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron’s masterly Fun Home, which can be no bad thing. It isn’t as accomplished or ambitious but there are echos in the low-key folk/pop that periodically blossoms into something astonishing, and in the sense of memories that haunt and hurt. The romantic attraction between Samantha and Kelly is presented with genuine subtlety and sensitivity, and even if it’s never explored as fully as the tentative relationship with Gabriel Hinchcliffe’s hugely likeable garage mechanic boyfriend, it’s probably better written. 

Hinchcliffe does lovely work but it’s clear the creatives have far more interest in the women than the sole male. Kelly has a beautifully written section where she’s attempting to galvanise Samantha to run away with her from their smalltown lives, and while there’s a neat symmetry in having the boyfriend Adam repeat the same lines and lyrics later on, it sounds more hollow coming from him.

The Other Palace’s studio space hems in a show that repeatedly trumpets the necessity of freedom and Emily Susanne Lloyd’s otherwise exquisitely judged production is encumbered by having the car that is central to plot developments permanently on stage. Generally, Reuben Speed’s set, like a giant, jaggedly shattered mirror through which figures from Samantha’s memories can magically manifest then disappear, is pretty effective, especially as sensitively lit by Joanne Marshall. It’s like a visual representation of Samantha’s fractured state of mind and also the aftermath of the car accidents that punctuate the narrative.

The second act is a little over long but the quality of the score (superbly played by Callum Thompson’s mini-band on the studio’s balcony level), most of the writing and the stupendously fine cast ensure that attention doesn’t flag. The Mad Ones is a little gem, refreshing, honest and quietly devastating. Enthusiastically recommended. 

HOUSE OF GAMES 

based on the screenplay by David Mamet, story by David Mamet and Jonathan Katz 

stage version by Richard Bean

directed by Jonathan Kent 

Hampstead Theatre, London – until 7 June 2025

running time: 1 hour 40 minutes no interval 

https://www.hampsteadtheatre.com/whats-on/2025/house-of-games/

Accepting things at face value feels like an increasingly naive thing to do in a modern world where you can’t seem to log on to your computer without receiving a phishing email, or read a paper without seeing a story about an innocent being scammed out of their life savings. Although based on a David Mamet-scripted movie first seen in 1987, House Of Games feels bracingly contemporary. Or maybe it’s just timeless, as apparently there will always be hustlers to hustle and suckers to be parted from their cash. 

In Jonathan Kent’s Rolls Royce production of a Richard Bean adaptation first seen at the Almeida in 2010, this stage version is a satisfying amalgam of edgy comedy and whiplash-inducing thriller. It’s fabulously well acted and designed, and the use of laptops and cellphones sets it very much in the present, or at least the very recent past. It also features, in Dr Margaret Ford, a Chicago therapist, writer and educator that gets drawn into a murky underworld of gambling and elaborate confidence trickery, a female central figure with agency and credible human layers, which is pretty rare in Mamet, a notoriously male-centric playwright. 

Lisa Dillon, in a superb performance, charts a richly detailed journey from detached but kindly professionalism through an unexpected bout of emotional investment to grim survival mode. She’s steely but warm and utterly credible, intelligently marrying together the career woman with the darker, wilder instincts lurking beneath the surface. 

Kent has surrounded her with quality. Robin Soans, Siôn Tudor Owen and Andrew Whipp offer delicious portrayals of a gang of incorrigible veteran gamblers who gather in the seedy, dark dive bar (realised with such vividness and relish by designer Ashley Martin-Davis that you can almost smell the stale smoke and spilt beer) under the supervision of Richard Harrington’s impressively volatile Mike, who Margaret falls for despite herself. Kelly Price and Laurence Ubong Williams, both electric presences, provide a fascinating change of energy as the pair of out-of-towners who this disparate bunch try to con money out of, or so we are led to believe. 

Oscar Lloyd brings a wired intensity to the gun-wielding, unstable rich kid who begins as Margaret’s patient but becomes her conduit into a shady underworld where her authority proves meaningless and Joanna Brookes finds comedy gold in an opinionated but concerned secretary. The acting from the entire company is so strong that it’s almost possible to ignore that there some tonal shifts in the script, possibly due to Bean’s comic instincts rubbing up against Mamet’s noirish machismo without quite making sparks, that don’t fully work, and that the play as a whole takes a bit too long to kick into thriller mode. When that does happen though, it’s wildly successful.

Kent’s production is strong on atmosphere, aided enormously by Martin-Davis’s intricate, impressive split level set, beautifully lit by Peter Mumford, that jumps between the contrasting locales of the basement bar and Margaret’s airily austere office with a filmic dexterity and speed. A bluesy music score marks the scene transitions and adds to the overall feeling of watching a screenplay on stage, although the performances and laser-sharp focus of the staging at times of high tension are the stuff of pure theatre.

House Of Games doesn’t have anything particularly profound to say about the human condition, beyond the fact that people are gullible (no spoilers here, but that includes audience members who take a while to cotton on to what is really happening) and ruthless, but it’s engaging entertainment. Why revive it now? If there’s no obvious raison d’être beyond giving people a good time in the theatre, well, maybe that’s enough, especially when it’s done this well.

Honestly, I suspect these particular actors invest their characters with rather more nuance and depth than is present in the writing, but when Kent’s enjoyable production hits its stride, the play becomes authentically gripping. I enjoyed this considerably more than the original Almeida version, which felt less streamlined and just generally harder going; it’s a cynical, funny, engrossing slice of twisted Americana with its heart nowhere the right place, and, under Jonathan Kent’s leadership, a feast of terrific acting. 

1536 

by Ava Pickett

directed by Lyndsey Turner 

Almeida Theatre, London – until 7 June 2025

running time: 1 hour 50 minutes, no interval 

https://almeida.co.uk/whats-on/1536-play/

“Has it always been like this? Will it always be like this?” asks Siena Kelly’s disillusioned Anna, a sixteenth century young woman whose freedom and intelligence is under fire in a world controlled by self-serving men in this historical comedy drama that speaks to the present day with a rare urgency.

Female rage when harnessed and honed is one of the most potent forces on earth. There’s a lot of female rage in Ava Pickett’s incandescent debut play, set in Tudor England but feeling bang up to date: there’s also a lot of passion, raucous humour and electrifying drama, plus some of the spiciest, most heartfelt dialogue written for theatre in quite some time. 

1536 was the year Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife, was beheaded (allegedly for adultery although in retrospect the claims seem spurious) and Pickett has imagined a trio of young women from rural 16th century Essex fascinated by, and commenting on, a Royal crisis that, on the surface, would only appear to have a tangential effect on their day-to-day lives. As with the narrative of history itself, the information these women receive is controlled by men, with the result that it takes a tremendous leap of faith and imagination for them to think outside the male-centric box they’ve been locked into. One of them (Kelly’s free-thinking, impassioned Anna) manages it successfully, the other two…not so much. 

One of the many wondrous things about Pickett’s script is that these characters never sound like mouthpieces. Far from it, these are recognisable flesh-and-blood humans who switch allegiances, keep secrets and have each others backs even when it’s actively painful to do so. The acutely observed, truthful performances of Kelly, Liv Hill and Tanya Reynolds – surely three of this country’s most brilliant young actresses – help immeasurably of course, but the writing is cracking. It never tips over into worthiness, and it’s frequently a hell of a lot of fun. The nearest this gets to cliché is that this central trio initially sound like archetypal ‘Essex girls’, which is quite deliberate and delicious.

Pickett’s dialogue is salty, stroppy, contemporary, and at first it seems that the point of 1536 is that witty, smart women were just as present in times gone by but that their lives were straitjacketed and stifled by the patriarchy. The women’s observations on the plight of Anne Boleyn, reports from London being drip-fed through periodically, also feel like a comment on the way news and scandal are shaped by biased mass media in the modern age. It turns out though that Pickett is on about something far deeper and more dramatic but it’s not fair to give away too much as the play becomes proper edge-of-your-seat stuff. 

Suffice it to say that the broken hearted love between Tanya Reynolds’s tartly funny, warmly independent midwife and a local landowner (Angus Cooper, multi-layered and compelling) is handled with real sensitivity. Hot button topics such as rape and domestic violence are introduced but it always feels entirely organic. Liv Hill as the most impressionable and (on the surface at least) vulnerable of the three women finds pathos in her naivety but also a volcanic anger and gut-wrenching pain as her far-from-happy domestic circumstances implode. When she screams at the more worldly wise, sexually confident Anna “a man looks at you, and you call it fucking power” it’s like a cry of agony but it’s also terrifying as one realises the chasm widening between these former friends. Adam Hugill is strong but subtle as a male presence who proves toxic to these women but is ultimately just as lost in his own way. There’s not a single false note in any of the acting. 

Lyndsey Turner’s production is basically flawless. It’s entirely, engagingly naturalistic, until it isn’t. The lighting by Jack Knowles conveys rural exteriors but then suddenly bathes Max Jones’s attractively bucolic set – all grass and flower bushels and a picturesque tree – in acidic yellow or deep sanguine red. It never feels flashy though, every creative working fully in service of the text. There’s even a section that veers into interpretive dance, furious and abandoned, to a howling vocal by Maimuna Memon (powerful compositon by Will Stuart), and used in a similar vein to that of the current Broadway smash hit, John Proctor Is The Villain, to which 1536 bears more than a passing resemblance. When the piece turns violent, it’s meaty not melodramatic, and has the tragic tang of inevitability.

The switch from off-the-cuff humour and foul-mouthed charm to despair and righteous anger is seamlessly done. So much is at stake here, and we feel it and, if we’re paying attention, are profoundly affected by it. There’s a line near the very end which encapsulates so much of what 1536 is about: as one of her best friends vows, yet again, to stifle her own desires and happiness to get by in a brutalised, male dominated world and to “be good”, Anna asks, in rage and frustration, “how you can be good when they keep changing the definition of what that is?”

Well, 1536 certainly gets to the heart of what a good play is. The Almeida run is, unsurprisingly, sold out already but do whatever you can to get a return or cancellation. Better still, let’s start a petition for a West End transfer. This is (literally) bloody marvellous.

HERE WE ARE

Book by David Ives

Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

inspired by the films of Luis Buñuel

directed by Joe Mantello

National Theatre/Lyttelton, London – until 28 June 2025

running time: 2 hours 20 minutes including interval 

https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/here-we-are/

When God’s gift to musical theatre (oh come on, yes he was) died in 2021, he’d been working with playwright David Ives on this distillation of a couple of Luis Buñuel mid-twentieth century art house movies for a decade. In truth, the opportunity to hear the final score by Stephen Sondheim is the main reason why people are flocking to the National this summer and, if you’re a fan of his work, Here We Are is unlikely to disappoint. His detractors probably won’t go anyway, but a lot of the stuff that grinds their gears (dense, challenging lyrics, staccato rhythms, shards of melody, unexpected chord structures) is all present and correct. So too is one of  the strongest ensemble casts on any current London stage and a dazzling Joe Mantello staging based on his earlier version seen at NYC’s The Shed in 2023.

Here We Are is a heck of a lot of fun, and it’s also by turns frustrating, alarming and downright baffling. Despite ten years of work, it feels unfinished, specifically Sondheim’s contribution which is a full, and sparkling, musical score during the first act which sees a bunch of rich, successful, self-obsessed Manhattanites heading out in search of a restaurant brunch that’ll never happen, but is reduced to underscoring and short sequences – non sequiturs in song really – in the elliptical, apocalyptic second half. Sondheim uses music and lyrics conversationally here, and fans will derive much fun from trying to work out if this or that bit sounds more like Sunday….or Company…..or Passion, then suddenly hits us with something thrilling and unexpected, or shimmering and lovely. 

The music never really blooms into the sweet release of something conventionally melodic though, as it does in, say, Sunday In The Park With George or Passion, which may prove unsatisfying to some. Jonathan Tunick’s orchestrations are as fine as anything else he ever created from the maestro’s work. Here We Are may be unsatisfactory if viewed as a conventional musical but when you can consider it as its own, bizarre beast, a witty, unsettling hybrid of script and music, then it’s zanily rewarding. 

If any creative team is going to work on a show that casts an absurdist eye on the concept of civilisation totally breaking down, then it’s this one. Sondheim has already dealt with the potential destruction of all that gives us comfort and hope in Sweeney Todd and Into The Woods, and David Ives explored shifts in power with a macabre wit in his hit 2010 play Venus In Fur. While Here We Are isn’t as complete a piece as any of those, it shares a beady-eyed appraisal of the faults and foibles of humans, overlaid with an off-the-wall surrealism that that has audiences rocking with laughter in one moment then reeling in shock the next. 

The characters aren’t sympathetic but they are grimly enjoyable company, especially with a cast that for the most part owe their primary allegiance to the stage rather than the orchestra pit underneath it. That’s especially important in a second act which barely feels like musical theatre at all, and requires the characters to unravel quite extremely (and entertainingly), which this superb team manage in spectacular fashion. The acting really is sensational throughout.

Rory Kinnear’s crazily wealthy vulgarian, living in a permanent state of low level aggression, is a familiar but horribly compelling creation while a bewitching yet hard-edged Jane Krakowski invests trophy wife Marianne with the constant sense of self-absorbed delight and childlike wonder that typifies a certain brand of super-rich. Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Martha Plimpton are gleefully hard nosed and hilarious as the plastic surgeon and publicist that turn up unexpectedly in their apartment. Chumisa Dornford-May continues to deliver on her earlier promise as Marianne’s rebellious younger sister, and Paulo Szot is an absolute riot as a womanising South American ambassador with criminal activity on his mind. 

If Harry Hadden-Paton can’t quite eclipse memories of David Hyde Pearce as shoe-obsessed Bishop having an existential crisis (“God knows / I’m a terrible priest”), he’s funny, endearing and truthful. Cameron Johnson and Richard Fleeshman make bold, essential contributions as a pair of military men with unexpected connections to the central figures. 

Returning from the original New York company are Tracie Bennett and Denis O’Hare playing multiple variations of serving and hospitality staff, bearing witness to the entitled and/or deranged behaviour of their financial, if not moral, betters. O’Hare was indisposed the night I saw Here We Are but Edward Baker-Duly delivered sparky, detailed, impressive work across a selection of roles. 

An astonishing Tracie Bennett proves once again why she’s been a Sondheim specialist for decades, prising a diamond-hard showstopper out of the extravagantly dour ‘It Is What It Is’ as a lachrymose, preposterously accented French maîtresse d’, but also finding irresistible comedy with an undertow of sadness and mania in a variety of other women, each exquisitely delineated. She has one line in the entire second act, playing an embassy maid whose look and physicality are not a million miles from Julie Walters’s ancient waitress in the inspired Victoria Wood “Two Soups” sketch, but is utterly magnetic whether passing silent judgement on the appalling guests or furtively slurping from a cognac bottle. Bennett was Olivier nominated for her stunning Carlotta (“I’m Still Here”) in the 2017 National revival of Sondheim’s Follies, and I strongly suspect she’ll be up for that same award again for this.

David Zinn’s clinical, chic set which makes the onstage figures look like exhibits in an art installation undergoes a luscious transformation in the second half, and Sam Pinkleton (director of current New York sensation Oh, Mary!) brilliantly makes his choreography feel character driven , like it springs organically from the scripted scenes. Natasha Katz’s lighting has a sculptural, transformative quality that further enhances a production where every creative feels at the top of their game.

In the UK, it’s probably only the National that would have the resources to present this strange yet insistent show with such style. Sometimes bewildering, more often ravishing, frequently delightful, and clearly unfinished, Here We Are is a curio for sure, but a life enhancing, challenging one. I mostly loved it but fully respect the opinions of those who totally won’t. You really have to experience this one for yourself.