Theatre

Sometimes it’s hard to describe a play without appearing to defame the writer, the performer and the theatre responsible for the production. Here’s what I saw. A semi-naked woman lurks in a corner, with her back to the audience, shaking. Rap music pounds. The woman shakes and shakes. Then she shakes a bit more. And a bit more. As her weird spasms enter their 17th uninterrupted minute, the spectators glance anxiously at their watches. Finally the woman’s twitching ceases. Speaking in a New York accent, she recites a conversation between an inquisitive child and an older girl. The theme is explicit sex chat. We aren’t told the girls’ names, or

Kenneth Lonergan, who wrote the movie Manchester by the Sea, shapes his work from loss, disillusionment, small-mindedness, hesitation and superficiality, all the forgettable detritus of life. The Starry Messenger is about Mark, a disappointed astronomer aged 52, who gives public lectures at a city planetarium. He loves his subject even though it let him down and every week he tackles the daft questions of his pupils with superhuman patience. The same two pests always raise their hands. One is a burly misanthrope who disbelieves all experts, the other is a high-flying oddball who craves attention. Mark starts a slow-burn affair with Angela, a single mum who needs a role model

The opening of Jonathan Maitland’s new play about Boris purports to be based on real events. Just before the referendum, the Tory maverick invited some chums over to help him decide whether to opt for Leave or Remain. Mrs Johnson was present along with Michael and Sarah Gove and the Evening Standard’s owner, Evgeny Lebedev. For a bit of fun, the writer adds spectral appearances from three ex-prime ministers, Blair, Thatcher and Churchill. This is amusing at first but it slows the play down because the fantasy figures can’t affect the real-life action. There are dazzling performances here. Tim Wallers plays Evgeny as a name-dropping simpleton with naked ankles and

It starts on a beautiful summer’s morning in the suburbs of America. A prosperous middle-aged dad is chatting with his neighbours in the garden of his comfortable home, but by nightfall his family has been destroyed. This is one of the most momentous convulsions in all drama. Arthur Miller’s masterful plotting, which he never again surpassed, is a match for the best. By the best I mean Oedipus. Jeremy Herrin’s production emphasises the lush fertility of America in the late 1940s. Trees in full leaf overlook the timber house that is perhaps a little too small for its millionaire owner. Joe Keller is a pioneering industrialist who served a brief

It starts at a secretarial college. The stage is occupied by a dignified elderly lady who recalls her pleasure at learning shorthand in the 1920s. She lived in Germany and she took a job at a firm headed by a man named Goldberg. He was Jewish. These unremarkable disclosures are spoken by Brunhilde Pomsel, a woman of high intellect and modest ambitions, who was born in 1911 and died two years ago, aged 106. Her life story was turned into a documentary film, which Christopher Hampton has adapted for the stage. Pomsel’s words are spoken by Dame Maggie Smith. What makes her fascinating is that she worked for Josef Goebbels

Nigel Slater is popular because he’s an exceptionally meek cook. Not for him the sprawling restaurant empire or the transatlantic TV career to excite envy and loathing. He writes about his trade in simple vivid prose and his bestselling memoir, Toast, has become a play. Young Nigel enters as a 1960s schoolboy, with shorts and a side parting, living in a posh suburb of Wolverhampton. Dad is a kindly but remote presence, an alien in his own home. Mum is a braindead kitchen-limpet who encourages Nigel’s first culinary experiments. The family are adventurous. They try spaghetti bolognese. Dad takes charge at the dinner table and loads each plate with a

The Phlebotomist by Ella Road explores the future of genetics. Suppose a simple blood test were able to tell us how long we will live and what disease will kill us. If the tests were compulsory and the results publicly available, a new hierarchy based on life expectancy would emerge. Citizens facing chronic illness or early death would struggle to find jobs and spouses. The scientists who administer the tests would come under pressure to falsify the results. And alpha citizens with high-grade DNA would be murdered, and their blood harvested to create fake genetic identities. This gruesome, ingenious and all-too-believable scenario is presented through a squeaky-clean romance between two

Bruce Norris is a firefighter among dramatists. He runs towards danger while others sprint in the other direction. His Pulitzer-winning hit Clybourne Park studied ethnic bigotry among American yuppies and it culminated in a gruesomely funny scene in which smug liberals exchange racist jokes in public. The play was morally complex, dramatically satisfying and an absolute hoot to watch. His new show, Downstate, co-commissioned by the NT and Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, takes on a far crunchier topic than racism. Child sex abuse. We’re in a residential home occupied by a quartet of tagged offenders monitored by a sharp-tongued probation officer. We meet the molesters. Fred was once a music

Nicholas Hytner’s new show, Alys, Always, is based on a Harriet Lane novel that carries a strong echo of Brideshead. A well-educated journalist, Frances, becomes entangled with the wealthy Kyte family (the closeness to ‘Flyte’ is doubtless intentional), and she befriends the silly daughter, Polly, before setting her sights on the enigmatic father, Laurence, a famous scribbler who never gives interviews. This slow-moving tale is intercut with scenes from Frances’s day job at a failing newspaper where the staff keep getting the boot. But Frances, mystifyingly, retains her post. How come? Floppiness is her most conspicuous quality. She’s a watchful sponge with no wit, charm or intellect, and for most

Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train by Stephen Adly Guirgis deserves its classic status. This wordy and highly cerebral play pulls off an extraordinary feat by leading the spectator inside the mind of a psychopath. The setting is Rikers Island, where an old lag, Lucius, befriends a younger detainee, Angel, who hopes to be acquitted of killing a pastor whom he shot in the buttocks. (The bullet-in-the-bottom detail is typical of Adly Guirgis’s macabre frivolity.) Lucius is a chain-smoking fitness freak who keeps himself in trim by jogging on the spot and performing bursts of press-ups in his cell. We first meet him as the victim of petty bullying by a

When reviewers call a work ‘important’ they mean ‘boring’ and ‘earnest’. And in those terms Shipwreck is one of the most ‘important’ shows I’ve ever seen. It’s not a play but a series of monologues and conversations spoken by a group of American liberals stuck overnight in a rural farmhouse. ‘It’s a red zone,’ they shudder when they learn that they’re in a Republican county. They pass the night carping loftily about the faults of Trump’s campaign and of his presidency between the inauguration and his dismissal of James Comey on 9 May 2017. It’s unclear why this arbitrary time period is chosen, and by ignoring more recent events the

All About Eve is Cinderella steeped in acid rather than sugar. Eve, or Cinders, is a wannabe star who uses a powerful theatre critic (the Buttons character) to help her win fame by overcoming two Ugly Sisters represented by a movie goddess, Margo Channing, and her film-director boyfriend. This fairytale was filmed in 1950 with Bette Davis as Margo and it remains a widely loved classic. Ivo van Hove’s version is torn between the 1950s and the present day. Result: a mystery. Margo is clearly being stalked by Eve but instead of referring the poor girl to a psychiatrist, she hires her as an understudy. Somewhat rash! Margo seems oddly

The Dumb Waiter is a one-act play from 1957 that retains an extraordinary hold over the minds of theatre-goers. It’s set in the basement of a Birmingham restaurant where two Cockney hitmen are preparing to execute an unknown victim. A dumb waiter, or shelf on pulleys, descends from above containing requests for two-course meals. Liver and onions are on the menu. Demands for cups of tea and sago pudding are sent down. The nervous thugs start to panic as they struggle to fulfil the instructions arriving from on high. It’s an absurd situation underpinned by an authentic sense of menace and violence. These are not just clownish villains but real

Hampstead has become quite a hit-factory since Ed Hall took over. His foreign policy is admirably simple. He scours New York for popular shows and spirits them over to London. His latest effort, Cost of Living, has attracted the film-star talent of Adrian Lester, who plays Eddie, a loquacious white trucker from Utah. (His ethnicity is made clear in the dialogue and the relevant lines have been left unchanged.) Earnest Eddie tells us about himself in a 15-minute monologue at the top of the show. Rather a clunky device. He’s a bookish teetotaller with a strong work ethic who appreciates the landscape of Utah, enjoys listening to Erik Satie’s over-played

The NT’s new play is an update of Pamela, a sexploitation novel by Samuel Richardson. It opens with Stephen Dillane and Cate Blanchett stranded in a concrete garage dressed as French maids. On one side, a black Audi saloon. Mid-stage, colourful blinking lights. At the edges, four other actors lurking. The main characters have no names so let’s call them Stephen and Cate. Who are they? Adulterous workmates, or a divorcing couple, or a male boss and his abused underling? The script reveals nothing about their characters, their backgrounds, their location or their intentions, and the audience’s natural reaction to this indifference is further indifference. Stephen and Cate grapple physically

The cast of Party Time includes John Simm, Celia Imrie, Ron Cook, Gary Kemp and other celebrities. They play a crew of posh thickos at a champagne party who chat away about private members’ clubs and adulterous affairs. In the background we hear of a ‘round-up’ involving the arrest and perhaps the murder of the government’s political foes. This is a short play with little spectacle, movement or psychological depth. Once the party-goers have been introduced, the script glazes over entirely. The actors form a line at the front of the stage, like glammed-up waxworks, and take turns at injecting their speeches with irony and humour in the hope of

Gary Raymond must have been wondering if it was the end of a promising career — curtains. He was starring in The Rat Patrol, a wartime adventure series. Co-star Justin Tarr had managed to roll the jeep Raymond and fellow actor Christopher George were travelling in. Raymond escaped with a badly broken ankle (he tells me it still gives him jip). George had more serious injuries, including an injured back and a heart contusion. Raymond lived to act another day, but when The Rat Patrol ended after two series, it really was the end of his Hollywood years. But what a few years he’d had, in El Cid alongside Charlton

Sweat, set in the Pennsylvanian rust belt, looks at a blue-collar community threatened by a factory closure. The script uses the flashback device. Scene One informs us that two lads were found guilty of doing a Bad Thing eight years ago. What Bad Thing? The author won’t tell us because the play needs suspense but the revelation is delayed so long that our patience is tested to the limit. The flaccid writing doesn’t help. Scene Two lasts 30 minutes and introduces us to the main characters, who visit the same bar every evening to get hammered and scream at each other. The only dramatic point in this lengthy scene is