Sarah Crompton

The production is astonishing for all the moments when it rests in the affection between Jocasta and Oedipus, whose physical longing for one another is shown very explicitly, or Oedipus for Watson’s Merope who tells him he is adopted in a voice thick with emotion and longing, making every word count. It is also notable for its stillness; all the activity of the early scenes, the playfights and the rushing, ultimately resolve into stark passages where Strong sits or stands, simply listening.

The difficulty with this approach is that it leaves both play and character nowhere to go when the darker shades of O’Casey’s writing and the keening undertow of the Irish Republican movement’s violence begin to rise to the surface. As the play deepens, and the family is torn apart, it’s only the set that breaks – with the arrival of a non-naturalistic pieta striving for the emotion that the production has failed to generate. The ending is also clumsily altered, to suggest something bleaker than Boyle’s final conclusion about a world of chaos.

Such a meta-theatrical conceit could have backfired. Yet Why Am I So Single? is warm, bold and overflowing with ideas. Not all of them land, but its fizzing generosity makes it one of the most enticing new musicals since, well, Six. It may not have the same broad appeal as that show, but it boasts sensational performances from Jo Foster and Leesa Tulley. It feels like a hit.

The quality of Jordan Fein’s wonderful, emotional production is that it perfectly holds the balance of Fiddler on the Roof, neither tilting towards saccharine nor bitterness, towards schmaltz or politics. It honours the care with which book writer Joseph Stein, lyricist Sheldon Harnick and composer Jerry Bock first created the show in 1964, under the passionate ferocity of their director Jerome Robbins.

Harris’s writing is at once subtle and bludgeoning; it doesn’t offer any moments of respite and it demands extraordinary acting from its entire ensemble. It gets it. Washington powerfully portrays a woman whose life has been distorted by wanting to resolve the unsayable; her stillness when listening and reacting is as remarkable as her final outburst. Harington, wearing his unquestioned privilege as easily as his linen shirt, is equally strong, creating a character whose willingness to undergo both physical and emotional exposure is driven by an adoration he barely understands.

Cox, all bark and ferocity, plays up the character’s fury, his sense of betrayal, his anger at the world and himself. In short, punchy outbursts of speech, he is cruelly dismissive of James, and you almost feel McCormack flinch beneath his verbal blows. Even more shockingly, he is prepared to skimp on the care of the delicate Edmund, whose diagnosis with consumption provides the play’s main narrative thread. Yet in the long final conversation between them, Cox also reveals James’s fear of poverty, and Kynaston’s wonderfully intense and frightened Edmund listens as if understanding his father for the first time.

It’s a sophisticated take on a jukebox musical, staged by Wheeldon with such energy and panache that the trajectory is breathtaking, scenes folding in and out of each other seamlessly. One particularly vivid sequence, for example, sweeps us from a disco party of celebration into the shapes and atmosphere of “Thriller”, complete with the press corps as the zombies and Jackson’s father Joseph as chief villain, into Jackson’s triumphant night at the 1984 Grammys, when he swept the board.

In transferring the film to the stage, Van Hove, who is adaptor as well as director, deliberately disrupts an already jagged story still further – introducing a documentary film crew who beam the cast’s reactions onto huge screens. Sometimes the screen shows what we are seeing on stage, sometimes it is a little behind. And sometimes, confusingly, it moves our attention to an action that is happening at the edge of things. The focus is always shifting, so that there is never an opportunity to get to understand any character before the next development lands. At the same time, Jan Versweyveld’s cluttered set, with mirrors and a table where the crew meet and chat, often doesn’t differentiate between scenes onstage in the play within the play that is being previewed to an audience, and the chaos backstage that is caused by Myrtle’s meltdown.

On paper it always feels as if it shouldn’t work. Yet on stage Hadestown is the most exhilarating ride. That band, with its bluesy trombone and folksy guitar is consistently thrilling, the songs are vibrant and smart, the sung-through text is compelling. In this version, the relationship between Orpheus and Grace Hodgett Young’s down-to earth Eurydice is also much refined, with a glorious and deeply felt performance from Dónal Finn that turns our hero into an agonised dreamer rather than a guitar-strumming popstar.

The whole thing has a contemporaneity that makes it feel urgent, a tribute both to Ibsen’s prescience and to Ostermeier’s rigorous analysis of its relevance. If the ending is depressing, that is because it sums up so precisely the state of things.

Line by line, scene by scene, The Hills of California holds the attention. It’s possibly only because of the exalted standards expected of Butterworth that somehow it remains an interesting evening rather than a revelatory one.

Starring the Rolls Royce real-life-husband-and-wife vehicle of Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, these three snapshots of battles between the sexes are so rooted in historical attitudes and Simon’s dyspeptic view of the state of his own era that it is impossible to enjoy them as anything but period pieces. And slightly difficult to relish them even as that – though Parker’s enthusiasm for the project is infectious enough just about to carry you through.

It’s a bit like seeing a 19th century actor manager taking to the stage. There are some magnetic moments – most notably with Jessica Revell who doubles both as Cordelia and The Fool – but Branagh seems reluctant to drop his guard, to expose himself to frailty or feeling. Even when he is battling the elements, he still seems to be in control. He holds the role but never fully seems to inhabit it.

Scott Thomas is superb, commanding the space with her presence and her widening eyes, at once mischievous and determined. This is a woman who takes on the sea in a daily swim, calming her mind in a battle against the waves; you feel the power of her decisions as well as her sadness. With her battered glamour and slightly crazed ferocity, she conveys both the sense of a woman taking one last chance to break out of a trap that her stalker has made – and the terrible sadness of a life wasted. “What if I am no longer spellbinding?” she asks, fingering her yellowing, old reviews.

Lea Salonga’s pure voice brings resonance to “Loving You” from Passion, and Bonnie Langford wrests every ounce of humour out of Follies’ “I’m Still Here”, that great tribute to theatrical resilience which mirrors her own trooping career. Janie Dee, meanwhile, walks off with several shows in “The Boy From..”, her eyes flashing with understanding as her lips wrangle the unpronounceable words. Jason Pennycooke lends remarkable energy to “Buddy’s Blues”. But the younger singers shine as well, with Christine Allado, Beatrice Penny-Touré and Bradley Jaden all exceptional in a notably strong ensemble.

What’s so magical about it is its delicacy. You imagine in advance that in order to embody so many different characters from the unhappy title figure, to his aged mother, to a crusading doctor, to a glamorous siren, and a plain lovelorn niece, Scott will resort to a lot of busyness, showing his range by leaping around the stage, putting on funny voices.

The frenetic pace that Jones dictates means they become caricatures, with no breathing space to suggest depth or subtlety, relying on physical comedy and broad effects. Because they are such brilliant performers, they produce great moments of humour – but they are given no room to develop anything below the surface.

They are traders, rabbis, lovers, wives, slipping between the characters with the help of an upturned collar or a nod of the head. The original trilogy of actors – Simon Russell Beale, Ben Miles and Adam Godley – created each of those characters for the first production in 2018, suiting their inflections to their own styles. It is extraordinary and rather wonderful to watch Nigel Lindsay, Michael Balogun and Hadley Fraser shape them in different ways.

On Robert Jones' clever set, with objects illuminated in the walls (lighting by Aideen Malone), they spar and dance and declare their love and anger. Annie-Lunnette Deakin-Foster's supple choreography and Rourke's direction move them fluently through the short scenes; one moment they are sitting in a crouch, the next seamlessly sprawled on the floor. They circle each other, weighing their next utterance. By the close, they simply sit, beginning to realise that compression can sometimes mean truth.