AUDITORIUM

✮✮✮✮ 1/2 Bertolt Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle The Brockley Jack Theatre | London adapted & directed by Ricky Dukes "I once knew a High Court Judge who farted in company," one of the funnier lines goes in Lazarus Theatre Company's breathtakingly original update of Brecht's revolutionary classic, "just to show an independent spirit." Ricky Dukes' wonderfully frenetic adaptation and manic ensemble cast show independent spirit in spades. In a room above the Brockley Jack p

✮✮✮ Lyle Kessler's Orphans Southwark Playhouse | London directed by Paul Tomlinson Dilated Theatre Company's welcome revival of Lyle Kessler's 1983 runaway success Orphans is like a cocktail shaken but not stirred. Loud kicks of emotional intensity give an explosive if frothy boost to the senses, but I was ultimately unstirred by the orphans' plight. The play and this production have all the good ingredients for a satisfying potion, but the result doesn't quite hit the spot.

✮✮✮ 1/2 Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape The Old Vic | London directed by Richard Jones A gold prospector in Honduras, a plant-packer in Argentina, a mule-keeper on a voyage to South Africa…and all this before the age of twenty-seven. Eugene O’Neill’s CV offers up a few hints as to his inexhaustible worldliness, and it is this breadth of unfiltered experience that established him as a literary champion of the underdog. From the Provincetown Players to his four Pulitzer Prizes,

✮✮✮✮ Ben Musgrave's Crushed Shells and Mud Southwark Playhouse | London directed by Russell Bolam "Beware them, beware them, for they are coming!" A deadly epidemic is scaring the life out of people in England. Mass hysteria means sufferers of the disease dare not reveal themselves for fear of being persecuted. People like God-bothering, borderline psychopath Peter harangue 'normal' members of the public to unite and smoke out the sick, "who mask their contamination," because

✮✮✮✮ Arthur Miller's The Man Who Had All the Luck King's Head Theatre | London directed by Paul Lichtenstern The Man Who Had All the Luck wasn't so lucky for its creator: Arthur Miller's first Broadway production shut after five days in 1944 following dismal reviews, and threatened to nip his career in the bud. It hasn't been performed much at all since then, which is unfair. This revival in Miller's centenary year by the top notch young theatre company End of Moving Walkway

✮✮✮✮ Patrick Marber's Three Days in the Country after Turgenev National Theatre | London directed by Patrick Marber Patrick Marber's condensed version of Turgenev's long-winded, novelistic A Month in the Country begins slowly, excruciatingly slowly, like most classic Russian plays. After about half an hour it suddenly fizzes into life, its intriguing mix of tragicomic plot, sub-plot, counter-plot (and counter-counter plot) gripping the audience's attention until the curtain c

✮✮✮✮✮ Kafka's The Trial Young Vic | London directed by Richard Jones At his first court appearance following his arrest for unspecified crimes, Rory Kinnear's Josef K says to himself, aloud, face contorted with bemused shock and fear: “ee musten proclaim im innocent, an im put all facts before ee judge, im wrong arrest...” This strange language in Nick Gill's excitingly terrifying adaptation of Kafka's nightmarish classic is baffling at first, and won't be everyone's cup of t

✮✮✮✮ Austin Pendleton's Orson's Shadow Southwark Playhouse | London directed by Alice Hamilton “A critic is a man that knows the way but can’t drive the car.” So coined Kenneth Tynan, who in Austin Pendleton’s play finds himself locked in the boot while two jealous drivers wrestle for control of the wheel, ignoring the critic’s muffled pleas to at least agree on one side of the road. Orson’s Shadow sees the titans of the age, Laurence Olivier and Orson Welles, slung together

✮✮✮✮ 1/2 Christopher Sergel's To Kill A Mockingbird Barbican Theatre | London directed by Timothy Sheader You’d be forgiven for approaching an adaptation of a book published fifty years ago and set in the 1930s’ deep south with a dim sense of déjà vu. Period pieces, especially those based on novels of such cultural heft, are always interesting. But beyond that? What could such a thing possibly have to do with the here and now of today? In a word, everything. Timothy Sheader’s

✮✮✮✮ Shakespeare's Measure for Measure The Globe | London directed by Dominic Dromgoole I'd forgotten just how funny Measure for Measure can be. Dominic Dromgoole's music-and-dancing, panto-esque production reminds us why anyone ever thought to include the text among the Comedies in the First Folio of 1623 (a categorisation baffling to modern audiences). This darkest of plays usually leaves audiences retching into their sick bags from hard-hitting portrayals of themes like pr