16 - Richard II, Tobacco Factory Bristol

I love adaptations of Shakespare, but it is nice to know some companies are still producing productions which concentrate on and showcase the language and poetry of the plays.

This deceptively simple staging was cleverly blocked for a theatre with audience sitting on all sides. The simple set consisted of a few pieces of set bought on for some scenes with a wooden throne like the one in the best known picture of Richard II framed from behind by a lovely stained glass set of doors. The setting was dressed by the fabulous costumes, flowing coats, authentic-looking fabrics and each person had a distinctively different outfit.

This was a very strong cast, we particularly enjoyed Benjamin Whitrow's performance as John of Gaunt chastising the King on his death bed, and he returned in the second half to give another engaging performance as the gardener.

The real star of the show of was Richard II, played by John Heffernan. Before his deposition he strode around the stage like a spoiled child, occasionally throwing a hilarious tantrum. But when he realised his kingdom had been won from him, we felt genuinely sorry for him. I felt like he was a young man who had been cruelly deceived into thinking his position as king was divinely appointed and therefore unshakable and watching him disillusioned was very affecting. When he wasn't on stage, although the other actors were all great, I felt eager for him to appear again and he represented a complicated character with a wide range.

It was a bit of a shock to find the play didn't seem to have been cut at all. I didn't expect to be emerging from the theatre at 11.20 and if the length was a little bit much for me it was certainly a killer for the large group of young girls sitting around us who I think were on a school or college trip. One of them fell asleep half way through the second half and while they were well behaved and polite they were certainly getting restless by the end, as was I. By the time Richard's moving speech in the tower came up and he proclaimed "I wasted time, and now doth time waste me" my immediate reaction was "tell me about it!"

That aside it was lovely to see the play in a way which showcased the beautiful language and I'd definately recommend this production to Shakespeare fans.

15 - The Children's Hour, Comedy Theatre

And so I return to the West End, this time to see The Children's Hour.

Forgive this rather hurried review here, I'm a few behind after a busy period of seeing 3 plays a week so I'm ahead on play viewing but a bit behind on play reviewing.

This was an engaging play. The heartbreaking tale of what happens when a little girl doesn't like it at school so she tells a lie, that the two teachers are engaged in a lesbian love affair. Immediately as the story spreads, all the parents pull their daughters out of the school and the reputation, business and lives of the two teachers are ruined. I love Keira Knightly on stage, she's not the most stellar stage presence ever but she is an enthalling and watchable actor. Elisabeth Moss was also enrgetic and gave a heart-tugging performance. I also enjoyed seeing Bryony Hannah as the obstinate young Mary who tells the lie who I saw in Earthquakes in London, one of my favourite plays of last year. She was vulnerable and frightening by turn, a really complex character.

While I enjoyed the production it did leave me a bit bemused though about why this play was being revived. It's from the 30s when they didn't say 'lesbian' and even this script about a lesbian romance that didn't happen was banned for being offensive. But we don't really live in that world any more. Surely there are plays that would say something about the kinds of prejudice gay people experience in today's world that would be more relevant and still get the audience rush that combining the words 'Kiera Knightly' and 'Lesbian' have no doubt provided. Compare it to the refreshing modern and relevant reinterpretation of The Misanthrope, Knightley's recent West End debut, and this all falls a little flat.

13 and 14 - Comedy of Errors and Richard III, Propeller

You haven't seen Shakespeare adapted until you've seen Propeller. My friend Marianne, a long-time Propeller groupie who introduced me to them, prompted her friend Charlie and I to travel to Cheltenham with her to see both the plays they're touring this season - Comedy of Errors and Richard III.

Propeller are an all male company who perform modern, high energy, accessible, addictive Shakespeare. They tour two plays at once and this is the first time I've had the chance to see both on the same day. If you love Shakespeare, theatre, comedy or slasher horror or if you have any plans to study or perform Shakespeare at any point in the future EVER I can't recommend enough that you do the same.

Comedy of Errors seems to be performed all over the place at the moment. It's a ridiculous play, not one but two sets of identical twins separated as children in a storm at sea. For some reason each ends up with the same name as their twin, years later Antipholus and his servant Dromio stumble into a strange town where everyone seems to know who they are and confusion and hilarity ensues. Propeller recognises the ridiculousness of the play and instead of trying to make the series of events seem plausible, adds more ridiculousness. So the slapstick in the play is accompanied by comedy musical sound effects, the camp policeman is straight out of the YMCA and his leather trousers squeak when he walks. The Abbess wears a short nun’s habit with fishnets and purple suede boots and we are even treated to the sight of Tony Bell running bollock naked through the audience with a lit sparkler sticking out his behind.

To the uninitiated this kind of interpretation might sound like a lack of respect for Shakespeare's work. But Propeller's productions work where others fail because they understand the plays inside out and a real love of Shakespeare is what comes across. They just want the plays to be as vibrant and relevant to today's audience as they would have been to an Elizabethan audience. We laughed all the way through, and so did the rest of the packed audience.

After laughing until our stomachs ached at the vibrant, colourful spectacular, we returned after dinner to see Richard III after dinner in a merry mood. We were not prepared for the same company to come back and rip out our stomachs, leaving the three of us speechless and for a good ten minutes afterwards feeling, as I eventually managed to comment to Marianne, a bit like we'd been mentally raped.

With the same cast and similar innovation, it was as if Richard III was a dark and distorted mirror version of Comedy of Errors. Like a photographic negative, the Hyde to the friendly and funny Jekyll. We were confronted with a stage decked out like a bleak mental asylum, actors staring out at us from masks that looked like bandaged faces. This bleak chorus shifted medical screens around to reveal characters, held victims down and threw around the ever increasing pile of body bags. And the bodies don't half stack up. The plot of Richard III is basically a list of murders and here every one was more creative, we saw disembowelling, chainsaws, a mother crying over heads in a jar. And behind it all the horrific but charismatic character of Richard himself played by Richard Clothier. It's a masterful performance, there's the classic repellent villainy, but you can also see how King Richard manipulates the world around him to climb to the top. He's somehow magnetic, enigmatic. He's also at points hilariously funny. The production doesn't shy away from black comedy and this was what really added depth to both the title character and the production as a whole.

It's not just me who loved this; critics are saying the variety in Clothier's performance makes his Richard III better than Laurence Olivier's. Edward Hall is a genius and this is the most riveting Shakespeare you are ever likely to see. If you can only see one of the plays, see Richard III. But DON'T do that, see them both or once you have seen one you will wish you had tickets for the other, sell your grandmother, sell your house, travel to Madrid just BOOK YOUR TICKETS NOW. Here you, go here are the tour dates. I'm going to go again and I still have 38 other plays to see this year!

12- Hanging Hooke by Siobhán Nicholas, Take the Space

It's a great feeling when you go to the theatre and are told a new story you have never heard before.

Hanging Hooke tells the story of Robert Hooke. Before seeing the play I thought I knew that Saint Paul's Cathedral was designed by Christophen Wren. Turns out he designed it with Robert Hooke, a man who until now I'd never heard of.

I'm not alone in this. This relatively new play written by Siobhán Nicholas, tells the story of a man effectively written out of history. And not just any man, Hooke is described as the English Leonardo Da Vinci. He is a gifted architect and engineer, he designed a prototype flying machine, a clock that would work on a ship and some of the most sophisticated microscopes and telescopes of the day. He was also a fine artist, drawing amazing illustrations for the books he published on the natural world. He was a scientific genius, he wrote about natural selection before Darwin, figured out gravity before Isaac Newton and is the person who told us all how springs worked.

In the first part of the play Chris Barnes plays the painter Jack Hoskins, describing his friend Hooke who he brought to London as a child. He is working on a painting of Hooke and turns the easel around for the audience to see. When he does so, we realise that the props on stage feature in the painting and he moves them into place to mirror its composition. Then he takes his place amongst them and removes his coat to reveal the same suit Hooke is wearing. As he steps into the painting he transforms before our eyes into Hooke himself. The physical difference between the two characters is starling. As Jack Hoskins, Barnes moved precisely and sedately and the character had a quiet contemplative tone. As Hooke, he hunches over and walks with a limp, but nevertheless darts around the stage with a feverish energy, particularly when describing his scientific theories. One experiment he decribes features Hooke encased in a sealed tank before an audience, from which the air is gradually pumped. Barnes recreates this painful and disconcerting feeling by standing on his head in the middle of the stage while describing it, an impressive feat. The character's passion and enthusiasm for his subject is infectious and we feel as passionate and fascinated as he is. This really drew the audience in to empathise with Hooke, I felt real affection and love for the character. So when Hooke discovers he has been betrayed, his ideas stolen and his name written out of history we are enraged and heartbroken on his behalf.

For this play is no dry scientific lecture, it has a plot as compelling as Dan Brown's Da Vinci code, (only well written and not based on a load of conspiracy theory guff.) Hooke has a brainwave and comes up with a theory of gravity, how it keeps planets in orbit around the sun and how all things attract each other. He writes to Newton who he feels would be the ideal colleague to aid him in working out the specific mathematical ratios for this but doesn't receive a reply. A number of years later Newton publishes a book with Hooke's idea in it and claims it as his own. He destroys Hooke's portrait hanging in the halls of the Royal Society and works to discredit and remove him from office. Finally he sends a fellow member of the shadowy secret college, bound to him by a secret oath, to steal Hooke's folio of papers, the only records Hooke has of his work and ideas. The man Newton sends is none other than Hooke's oldest friend, the painter Jack Hoskins.

It's all just so interesting. Just the facts of the story are gripping but add in the fascinating 17th Century scientific theories and the lovable tragic character bought to life so skillfully by Chris Barnes and you have a real masterpiece.

11 - Richard and Trudy, Exit Theatre Company, Charles Cryer Theatre in Carshalton

Number 11 is a play written by a friend of mine, David Trotter, which I did the lighting for last week.

I had mixed feelings about this production. Exit are very good at special effects and the best bits of the production were definitely the murders. Blood all over the stage, eyeballs being spat into the audience etc, it was all very Nighty Night or League of Gentlemen.

However for me this just didn't fit in with the play's setting, a Faulty Towers-esque hotel in Devon run by a couple who were basically Sybil and Basil Faulty. It was like an old fashioned farce but with a graphic sex scene and gory violence. It just didn't seem to make up its mind what genre it was. If John Cleese had done a Faulty Towers episode where he pulled his trousers down and shagged Connie Booth in the reception, then chopped off Andrew Sach's head with a bread knife, rather than being entertained everyone would think he'd gone raving mad.

There were a few great performances in the play, I thought Matt Lunnemann's panicked hotel owner, Richard, was great, basically a good John Cleese impression and Angel Marinez really stole the show as the lovable but stupid detective Thomas. There was a lack of chemistry between Richard and Trudy making their relationship very unbelievable, which I think was because Matt played Richard as quite naturalistic while Gill Butler was playing a much more of a caricature as Trudy. I just didn't get her performance to be honest, she didn't seem to react to what other characters were saying and it was all in exactly the same tone all the way through which I found irritating. (Hard for me to judge though as I auditioned for the part and would have done it very differently so maybe that's it.)

I thought Lucy Hamilton and Joe Webster played the two chav characters very well, and I think they got the biggest laughs after Angel. But although the performances were very good I didn't like these two characters from the time I first read the play, they are an old stereotype now reminiscent of ancient Little Britain sketches. If you're going to write this kind of character I think it should be much more realistic and have more depth to it, like the girl in Misfits, or even the McQueens in Hollyoaks. When middle class Waitrose shoppers like me take a cheap shot at working class people it makes me feel uncomfortable. Maybe I'm just too full of lefty guilt, it has certainly been said of me before.

I thought David did a very good job with the plot, I certainly wouldn't be able to come up with such a neat storyline with just the right amount of twists and turns and I think it is an under-appreciated talent. I would definitely have tweaked the play a bit so it didn't contain black-outs apart from at the interval, as a single setting play taking place over the course of one night it was totally unnecessary to have long black outs. Unnecessary scene divisions are a pet hate of mine and happen all to often in amateur productions. They really slowed the pace down in this play which was a shame as by the end of the run the play had a lot of momentum with snappy entrances and exits through the numerous doors in true farce tradition.

Finally I'd like to add a very well done to Felicity Foregone who gave her first ever drag performance before the show. After doing a similar warm-up for Anybody for Murder? I know how terrifying a warm-up improv is. She got better every night, with just the right amount of audience participation and really got everyone in the mood.

You can buy a copy of Richard and Trudy from Amazon here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Richard-Trudy-Play-David-Trotter/dp/1840948086

10 - A Midsummer Night's Dream, Gameshow at Broadway Studio Theatre, Catford

One of the things I love about Shakespeare is how adaptable the plays are. It is the constant inventiveness of companies and directors that keep us going to see the same plays reinvented again and again. I have seen A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a big top, with fairies on roller-skates and even performed in several different languages. What made all these productions work was a clear consistent concept, a vision of how the company wanted the audience to see the play with fresh eyes. This was a consistency that was missing in this production.

The set, which I loved, featured two trees with mismatched table lamps attached as branches which flickered to show fairies were flickering about. This meant when we entered I thought we were in for a low-tech kitch style production.

But the four actors were in highly contemporary dress, clashing with this style. There were several childhood themed props: a slide, kazoos, a xylophone. Producing the play as if the characters were children amongst found objects, as if in an attic or similar would have been lovely. But when playing fairies their style changed again, Oberon and Titania standing almost static talking into bulky wired microphones moving only their hands as if signing. Puck moved about more, wearing some white gloves which lit up with coloured lights at the fingertips. This introduced yet another theme, of circus, which again didn’t match anything else that was going on. Puck, played by Sarah Calver also didn’t make enough use of the gloves, just constantly wringing her hands as if speaking sign language.

The production was full of missed opportunities. James Utechin as Lysander threw away so many funny lines in the lovers’ big argument scene I wanted to stand up and shout at him.

When I go to see a production of a Midsummer Night’s Dream I always look forward to seeing the Mechanicals: Bottom and the players’ disastrous rehearsals and hilarious production of Pyramus and Thisbe at the wedding at the end. So when I realised this company had cut all these scenes I was slightly disappointed but intrigued about what they might offer in their place. These scenes were replaced by the actors coming “out of character” and being the foolish actors themselves preparing for the “bonus play” of Pyramus and Thisbe after they had finished the main play. There was a nice touch to this as they drew the audience in, asking us to vote for what kind of Pyramus, Thisbe, Lion and Wall we would like to see enacted at the end. (Resulting in a dog Pyramus and an old male cockney Thisby whispering through a wall created by a till roll with ‘walley’ written on it.) However as an audience accustomed to watching Whose Line Is It Anyway? and similar improvisation shows, this staged and rather contrived version didn’t quite cut the mustard. If you’re going to cut the funniest part of a well-loved play I would expect you to replace it with something that at the very least is funnier than what you have cut. It was also problematic when it came to the scenes between Bottom and Titania with Gabriella Best going back into her Shakespearian character to play Titania but Louie McKenna staying outside the play still playing the overconfident actor with modern speech. He acted surprised when Titania approached him announcing she loved him, a surprise which considering he was supposed to be an actor playing a part in the same play as her, simply didn’t make any sense and was clumsily glossed over.

I love adaptations and rewrites of Shakespeare but they need to have more of an attention to detail than this. The company didn’t seem to love the play enough to stick to one good concept and do it justice. This feeling was compounded by a couple of small stumbles with lines which was surprising considering this was a number of performances into the run. It was particularly strange to hear this, and noticeable to the audience, as A Midsummer Night’s Dream is written almost entirely in rhyming iambic pentameter.

This production promised a lot and was full of great ideas but they were not followed through. While this was enjoyable to watch and engaged the audience, it wasn’t the best Midsummer Night’s Dream I have ever seen and if a professional company chooses to put on one of the most commonly performed Shakespeare plays I expect them to impress. This felt more like a work in progress, a scrapbook of decent concepts but not effective as a whole.

9 - Othello, Swivel Theatre Company at Baron's Court Theatre

In the programme for Othello it says that the company "aims to invite our audience to steal a look into the secret and private world of Shakespeare's characters." This intimate and highly charged production did just that. The close underground theatre with the audience surrounding three sides of a small stage was ideal for a play as psychologically intense as Othello. We could see every facial expression very clearly so the actors were able to include subtle expressions, winks and glances to give a very rich interpretation of the characters.

The director's Baz Lurhmann influence, which she also mentions in the programme, was particularly apparent in the drunken fight scene in which repetition of lines, modern music and over energetic movement really created the atmosphere and put across the mood of the scene very well and reminded me of the Queen Mab speech in Lurhmann's Romeo + Juliet film. The fight, choreographed by Dominic Leeder who also played a fine Lodovico, was first rate; more than once I cringed and looked away at a particularly realistic punch or kick.

This was a high energy production throughout, keeping the pace fast with characters moving around the stage constantly. This also meant that despite the difficulties of having to play to audiences on all sides we were never looking at the back of anyone's head for long. The supporting roles were especially lively and energetic; Gemma Barret as Bianca and Chris Paddon as Roderigo were particularly fun to watch

When El Razzougui first emerged on stage as Othello my initial thought was that he was too handsome for the role, Othello is described in the play as being significantly older and lines such as "In my youth" seemed a bit incongruous with his youthful appearance. However he gave a powerful performance and there was palpable chemistry between him and Devon Lang Wilton as Desdemona which helped draw us in and added to the tragedy of the second act.

Of course the real central character of the play is the scheming Iago, who brings about Othello's downfall by suggesting his wife Desdemona is going behind his back with his lieutenant Cassio. Iago is the ultimate villain, he seems to have no concrete reason for concocting this terrible revenge and shows not a shred of remorse. Tom Fava was truly excellent in the role. He resisted the easy temptation of becoming a pantomime baddy and gave us just the right mixture of the camp super-villian and the creepy guy at the back of the bus. His sneering smile was chilling and I felt privileged to see such a talented actor in his London Fringe debut.

The women in Othello can be problematic for a modern interpretation, particularly towards the end as a blameless Desdemona constantly pleads forgiveness from her husband who murders her. This production balanced the anti-feminist undertones of the play by making other strong women characters. The Duke was turned into a female character played by an excellently authoritative Rowena Lennon. Bianca was also brilliantly reinvented to be a communications private so she came across as more of a modern independent feisty woman than the more usual slutty hanger-on. Possibly the strongest woman though was Iago's wife Emilia whose speech to Desdemona about how men should we wary of how they treat their women was one of my favourite moments. Exposing her husband loudly and with fury in the end scene, fighting her husband all the way, her death was a real contrast to Desdemona's. The only problem was it was difficult for us to understand why, as she seemed so modern and outspoken, she had handed Desdemona's handkerchief over to Iago without demanding to know the reason he wanted it. I thought we could have seen a little bit more of a realisation and dilemma from her earlier on to combat this.


I liked the way the production was not afraid to retain some comedy in the play, lighter moments helped break the tension in order for it to be built back up again. The production ranged from being disconcerting to being darkly funny and this kept it highly entertaining throughout.