Marianka Swain

Matthew Warchus’s combative traverse staging, with a bank of the audience seated onstage, works a treat, creating a claustrophobic intensity and forcing us to look at ourselves – we are responsible here too. The scene changes could be much shorter though, especially in such a taut 90-minute piece. In a cynical world, Penhall’s play is notable for its empathy – a quality that Monica strives for, and which is baked into the show at a fundamental level. Fixing our system so that it supports everyone, including genuinely good MPs? That gets my vote.

Bartlett Sher’s sumptuous production is particularly well attuned to Sam and Bella Spewack’s wittily Shakespearean play-within-a-play conceit, using a busy revolve that constantly whisks us between on- and backstage (marvellous lofty design by Michael Yeargan). In one bravura sequence, an argument erupts mid-show, then continues as Lilli and Fred storm into the wings and then their dressing rooms, the fast-changing set matching their rising tempers and blurred boundaries.

The show is buoyantly funny, teeming with macabre gags and Victoria Wood-esque specific one-liners, the pop-infused songs are instantly catchy (I keep humming “We’re Gonna Wow Felicia Taylor”), and there are narrative twists a-plenty. However, the suspects aren’t filled out enough to make guessing whodunit truly satisfying, and it lacks a killer Agatha Christie-level denouement (her enduring The Mousetrap sits next door).

Although this is a love letter to Sheffield and its community (Henderson’s relish gets a cameo role), Bush articulates the opposing argument too: that your hometown can sometimes be a trap, and you might need to leave to grow. Likewise, she gives us swooning declarations of love, yet has an exasperated Poppy call out the grand-gesture-profferring Nikki’s “Richard Curtis bullshit”.

The aesthetics and sound world suggest Depression-era New Orleans, although its exact location and time period are left deliberately vague. Even more so in this superb new British incarnation, in which the cast all use their natural accents. That means we get Dónal Finn’s Irish Orpheus (rooting him in another great folk tradition), Grace Hodgett Young’s grounded, no-nonsense East Midlands-accented Eurydice, and, most strikingly, Melanie La Barrie’s Trinidadian Hermes. In fact, with her dapper silver suit, expressive patois and roof-raising, soulful vocals, La Barrie just about walks off with the show.

Ibsen goes punk in German director Thomas Ostermeier’s shockingly audacious, fourth-wall-smashing An Enemy of the People. Adapted by Ostermeier and Florian Borchmeyer for the Berlin Schaubühne in 2012, and translated by Duncan Macmillan, it’s an eerily apt commentary on our current woes – and, thanks to a dynamite set-piece, is unlike anything else you’ll see in the West End right now.

At times, when we’re plunged into darkness, with only torch beams to guide us, it feels like a return to telling spooky tales around a campfire. Budding director Joyce also preaches the power of stories – and that becomes a key Hamlet-riffing plot point. This astounding show definitely feels like a new chapter in theatre. It’s out of this world.

There are some pointed lessons in here: the other guests wrongly mistreat Gran just because she’s different (and foreign). Kirkwood also reverses some of Dahl’s own dubious messaging – yes, the witches are bald, but so is the heroic Gran. The show bravely keeps Dahl’s ending, but makes it a life-affirming battle cry. Seize the moment – and seize tickets to this total triumph of a show.

One night just wasn’t enough. Happily, Cameron Mackintosh’s all-star revue tribute to the late Stephen Sondheim, a one-off event in 2022, has returned for a full run. Gone are celebrity cameos (Judi Dench, Damian Lewis), but in their place is a slicker and a more evidently company endeavour, with noted stage names generously trading the spotlight.

Sylvia also zips through the years, giving us little time to really dig into the lead characters’ lives and motivations. I wished we could have seen the Pankhursts interacting as a family, rather than just spouting slogans at one another, so we could feel the weight of what is sacrificed here – or that Christabel’s queerness could be characterised as more than just a potential PR problem.