Andrzej Lukowski — Theater Critic

Wilson’s play is unabashedly populist, bordering on trashy at times, and while there may be some real-life precedent for Pat separately commissioning both Yvonne and Neil to get to the bottom of the gang story – so they are overtly in competition – it does feel like a clunking plot device to up the excitement. And it works: Clint Dyer’s production is totally gripping, especially in the first half as the dialogue rapidly intercuts between the two rival journalists bitching about each other. Yes, it has the air of a well-made Channel 5 true-crime drama. But not all theatre need to be highbrow all the time, plus it makes a lot of incisive points about the fragility of the African-American community, especially as Pam’s hardassed facade melts (or at least, becomes more explicable).

The main problem is that the Electra section ends up feeling somewhat thrown away because it’s so much shorter than the Persona section, and with a lighter tone (closer to Andrews’ usual voice on productions like his recent Hoss-starring Cherry Orchard). And that’s a shame because it’s very good and – despite the millennia-old plot – feels like an original stage work. Persona is really much closer to an act of transposition, of putting Bergman’s story on the stage faithfully. But it’s intense, serious, psychologically demanding source material that drains the night away from the shorter play. Electra is good, Persona is good, Electra/Persona isn’t necessarily one for the ages.

But from the POV of an audience member who will only ever see it one way around, let’s call it what it is: a flex over how good Blanchett and Hoss are. And they’re really, really good: even if Benedict Andrews’ production maybe doesn’t entirely ‘work’, the sense that it is just bloody amazing having two such incredible actors doing an enormous amount of acting – and that we’re actually only even seeing half of it – pretty much carries the night.

The titular Jellicle Cats are both familiar but also grungier and less cosy than their leg warmer-clad 1981 forbears. The biggest difference between the two incarnations of Cats probably lies in the choreography – high energy and aerobic in the original (by Gillian Lynne), sinuous and twitchy under McOnie. It’s very telling that he’s a director-choreographer: if it is of course never even slightly believable that you’re watching a group of actual cats, but there’s a real unity between the leaner, edgier look of the performers and the leaner, edgier choreo.

And Stone’s characters are by and large enjoyable. You’ll appreciate Sheehy’s performance a splash more if you’ve seen her in anything else and can appreciate just how far her delightfully awkward posh girl Alice is from anything else the Welsh actor has done. But she’s a delight either way, a vibrant cocktail of privilege and inferiority complex. US star Parker teeters on the cusp of panto villain but she’s tremendously good at it; with a couple of gloriously scenery-chewing monologues. And there are some great second-order characters too, particularly Rakhee Thakrar as Christopher’s parodically wholesome new girlfriend Chandra.

All in all it’s a good production that slots into the Jamie Lloyd era of Sexy Lloyd Webber very nicely indeed. The problem, I’m afraid, is the lead. A year ago Lloyd directed Evita at the Palladium and it was made by an astonishing turn from Rachel Zegler. Sam Ryder has been given the same stage and just isn’t in her league. He’s a pop star – but we needed a superstar.

If you really like Frank Sinatra, this is absolutely fine. But it’s so far from exceptional. And for a big West End show with clear Broadway aspirations it should be so much better. The last massive bio-musical was MJ. It had its problems. It also had a canny book by a world-class playwright (Lynn Nottage) and, more to the point, its lead actor Myles Frost embodied all that was electrifying about Michael Jackson as singer and dancer.

There’s a slightly woolly message to it all about growing up and learning to be yourself that could be most kindly viewed as another homage to Sesame Street. Still, the story isn’t that substantial – Jeff Whitty’s book is secondary to the concept – and it vacillates over how earnest it wants to be (notably the edgy jokes about racism vs Kate’s sincere but underdeveloped attempts to stand up for monster rights). The script has been given a cosmetic overhaul and now has references to Trump, AI, etc. It’s all pretty skin deep, though. Again: Avenue Q today is not the punky outsider it was almost a quarter century ago. But as a heritage musical, it remains a delightful one-off.

But Miller is very good at exploring the ambiguity of rape cases. On the one hand there’s the fact that ambiguity is why most of them fail in court – it is extremely difficult to obtain clearcut evidence (helpfully Jessica early on describes a rare successful prosecution). But there’s also a moral vagueness that Jessica and her husband Michael (Jamie Glover) cling to, the sense that due to different understandings of the incident Harry and the girl in question might both be ‘right’, that she Jessica can hold on to her principles and her beloved son by telling herself Harry did wrong but misunderstood the situation. Miller’s plays explore why rape convictions are so rare, and portraying Harry as wildly unsympathetically would not help in that regard.

Danya Taymor’s production – which transfers recast from a smash Broadway run – is an absolute blast, the many serious issues raised all of a piece with its breathless ebullience and Belflower’s endlessly witty text. As much as anything else, it’s a wholehearted celebration of teen girl dorkiness and a rebuttal to the idea their lives should be viewed through a sexual lens, even in sympathy.

nd of course Chekhov is the melancholically amusing elephant in the bittersweet room here. His plays about the same sort of people set in the same sort of time are so deathlessly popular – not to mention, good – that it’s hard not to compare and contrast. Summerfolk is a fine play but it’s the moments where this production feels less like Chekhov – when it’s broader or angrier – that it really distinguishes itself. Still, history suggests we’re looking at something like a 25-year gap until it gets staged again. So this is a generational production, really, and whatever its flaws are, they shouldn’t put you off seeing the sort of luxury revival that the NT was made for.

Again, I refuse to treat Williams’ style like the Emperor’s new clothes. He’s onto something! It just doesn’t entirely work here. Despite stumbling over the odd line, Erivo is charismatic, game, and essentially does her best as a cog in Williams’ elaborate machine. But if you agree to tie your big comeback to a very specific directorial vision, there’s not much even a superstar actor can do if that vision is faulty.

Carrie Cracknell’s revival is not an attempt to radically reconfigure Arcadia and I doubt anyone would be so foolish as to try – it’s an incredibly specific play. She and her team - notably designer Alex Eales - have however leaned nicely into the Old Vic’s current in-the-round configuration. A bit of furniture aside, they've forgone any serious attempt to make it look like the country estate on which the play is set, which we visit in the early 19th century and again in the present. Instead we’ve got a revolving circular stage and lights that look like a mobile of the stars – a specific allusion to some lines in the text but also a neat encapsulation of the text’s underlying sense of cosmic wonder.

I think my biggest problem is that with her amusingly preposterous sister in law Muriel (Louise Brealey) and son Rick (Taylor Uttley) freshly escaped from a cult, Susan’s ‘real’ life is so overegged that it’s scarcely any less ludicrous than her imagined one. And while that may possibly be the idea (although I don’t think it actually is the idea) it’s difficult to see what the play is really saying about her. She’s a middle-aged woman who has been left behind by the real world and has instead embraced one conjured by her subconscious. But it never really takes the time to slow down and properly explore loneliness, middle aged sexuality, or even mental health. There is something melancholic and Chekhovian at its core, but it’s deep, deep beneath the surface, obscured by an all consuming conceptual glamour.

Two great leads, a handful of good lines, some top notch physical business and the epically random deployment of Belle and Sebastian’s classic 1996 song ‘Get Me Away from Here, I’m Dying’ – these are all good things. Existing at the point in the curve where subversive New York cabaret and naff ‘70s British comedy overlap, there’s clearly an audience over here for Oh, Mary! But that’s not the same thing as living up to the hype.

Two great leads, a handful of good lines, some top notch physical business and the epically random deployment of Belle and Sebastian’s classic 1996 song ‘Get Me Away from Here, I’m Dying’ – these are all good things. Existing at the point in the curve where subversive New York cabaret and naff ‘70s British comedy overlap, there’s clearly an audience over here for Oh, Mary! But that’s not the same thing as living up to the hype.

There’s some pretty jaw-dropping stuff I’d best not even obliquely describe. But on the whole it avoids manipulative jump scares in favour of unnerving moments of rug pulling, where what you assumed was happening in a scene is revealed to be horrifyingly off the mark. And the creepy atmosphere stuff is second to none, from subtle things – the play of light reflected from passing vehicles creates the sense of movement in the house at night – to full on: it opens in pitch darkness, with Nirvana’s ‘Lithium’ raging around us, a truly weird experience, elated and suffocating at once.

Elerian was born to direct this - the play suits his tricksterish style and capricious humour. Rajha Shakity’s flexible set is evocative, an eerie, nocturnal netherworld. There’s an Apocalypse Now-like cracked odyssey quality to the play’s depiction of a generation going mad in a chaotic, lawless conflict, but unlike the US-centricity of most of the great works about the Vietnam War, this takes a wider view of its impact on Americans, Iraqis, and even nature itself.

While Sondheim is the marquee name, the book and lyrics are by James Lapine (who also did the honours for Sunday in the Park with George and Passion). He naturally does a tremendous job – his lyrics are sometimes hilariously bathetic, sometimes formally audacious, sometimes devastatingly poignant, often all three in a single song. But every second is filled with Sondheim’s presence: his lush, motif-saturated score of baroque nursery rhymes feels as vividly alive as the forest itself.

The songs by McFly’s Tom Fletcher are very decent: none are sidesplittingly funny, though there are some nicely droll numbers about London, marmalade and whatnot. The heart of it actually lies in big sweeping ballads like ‘The Explorer and the Bear’ and ‘One of Us’ – they add a sense of yearning that nicely contrasts with the goofier action of the actual story. It’s a little short on bangers but there’s a good sprinkling of decent choruses.

There are problems. Mia Carragher is certainly up to the considerable physical demands of playing Katniss, and maybe that’s why she got the role - there are no stunt doubles here. But she’s somewhat light on the ol’ charisma and she talks in a breathy Marilyn Monroe-style accent that is odd bordering on distracting. She’s not helped by Conor McPherson’s adaptation, which casts her as both protagonist and narrator. It’s true that there’s a lot to explain. But in such an action-heavy format, having the lead character constantly offering background on what’s going on really undermines the sense of her living in a dangerous moment.

There are problems. Mia Carragher is certainly up to the considerable physical demands of playing Katniss, and maybe that’s why she got the role - there are no stunt doubles here. But she’s somewhat light on the ol’ charisma and she talks in a breathy Marilyn Monroe-style accent that is odd bordering on distracting. She’s not helped by Conor McPherson’s adaptation, which casts her as both protagonist and narrator. It’s true that there’s a lot to explain. But in such an action-heavy format, having the lead character constantly offering background on what’s going on really undermines the sense of her living in a dangerous moment.

Though it would be pushing it to say Tom Morris directs Othello as a comedy, he certainly wrings more laughs than usual out of Shakespeare’s great comedy. To be fair I don’t think I’d appreciated the extent to which previous productions I’ve seen had been using smart line reads to avoid giggles every time a character describes the villainous Iago – the greatest snake in English literature – as ‘honest’. Morris just cheerily milks it, and the result is a lighter-than-usual take on the play. Not out and out hilarious, but with a certain glossiness that speaks of a desire to go easy on a West End audience.

Though it would be pushing it to say Tom Morris directs Othello as a comedy, he certainly wrings more laughs than usual out of Shakespeare’s great comedy. To be fair I don’t think I’d appreciated the extent to which previous productions I’ve seen had been using smart line reads to avoid giggles every time a character describes the villainous Iago – the greatest snake in English literature – as ‘honest’. Morris just cheerily milks it, and the result is a lighter-than-usual take on the play. Not out and out hilarious, but with a certain glossiness that speaks of a desire to go easy on a West End audience.

The even more famous Susan Sarandon – making her UK stage debut – has less to get stuck into. Playing Mary Page in her eldest years, there is no fault in her acting and at 79 she’s in great form. The trouble is that in all three of her scenes, her Mary Page is essentially content and has largely surmounted the volcanic traumas of her earlier life. Sure, it’s part of the point that Mary Page is different from scene to scene. And there is some subtly devastating stuff quietly revealed in these sections. But Sarandon is tonally adrift from a play that’s mostly about how difficult this woman’s life was - she almost feels like she’s in her own, lower-stakes drama.