If you missed the Donmar Warehouse's ground-breaking production of Macbeth with the incomparable David Tennant and a wonderful Cush Jumbo, it is now coming to the cinema screen. Tennant's Macbeth roars and rages, and Jumbo's Lady Macbeth is seductively sinister. Both actors put in compelling performances that are satisfyingly supported by Benny Young's sensitive Duncan, Cal MacAninch's steadfast Banquo and Noof Ousellam's steely Macduff. Part of the power of the original production was the use of binaural headphones to channel the sounds of the play and create an immersive involvement that, unfortunately, is largely lost in this cinematic version. Nevertheless, the performances shine, and we were captivated by Jumbo's purring persuasiveness and terrified by Tennant's ruthless ambition. The decision to project the voices of the witches as they echo in Macbeth's mind works exquisitely to heighten the eeriness of the situation, but the decision to rewr...

Erik Kahn's Canned Goods recounts the story of the false flag operation that Hitler used as an excuse to invade Poland in 1939. The "canned goods" are three prisoners who will be used to impersonate Polish soldiers who attack a German radio station, thus providing an excuse for the Reich to retaliate. The prisoners who will be exploited in this gambit are a Polish farmer, a Jewish intellectual and a German petty thief. They are, no doubt, intended to be representative of the people Hitler used to his advantage in his plan to assert the Nazi hegemony. In prison confronted with an unknown and uncertain fate, the captives' conversations take a philosophical bent, questioning the purpose of suffering, the intervention of God in human affairs and the presence of evil. These existential and political meditations, along with the exposure of Hitler's theatrical propaganda and manipulation of public opinion, are clearly intended to resonate with current world events, and...

When a shack appears in the midst of the upper middle class neighbourhood of Stillwater, the residents of this enclave of suburban serenity are concerned. Will the appearance of these squatters depress property values or will their mere presence lower the tone of the community? How to deal with these interlopers raises questions about the values and the prejudices of the current dwellers in this bourgeois haven. What really are the ties that bind this community, and what are the compromises one should make to be part of it? Amy Jephta thoughtfully strips away the self-deceptions and hypocrisy of all of her characters forcing them, and the audience, to realise that community is a concept based on compromise and that by definition, it means that there are others who are outsiders. The bonds that bind people together are frail and the line between the assertion of identity and bigotry is not always as clear as we might like to pretend. As the manipulative and maladroit instigators of the ...

Otto von Bismarck once said, "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made." The challenge for the theatre in presenting such events is that the process is not only messy, it can also be both time-consuming and tedious. However, Kyoto does the next to impossible. It takes the audience inside the procedures of developing an international climate protocol, and it manages to make the dry arguing about language and the Byzantine political strategies absolutely fascinating. Stretching over years of negotiations, it exposes the dark interests at play in a game of political chess that affects everyone of us, while simultaneously presenting the manifold complexities of developing international agreements. To focus this rather abstract and convoluted tale, playwrights Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson have honed in on the character of Don Pearlman, who served in the Reagan government and who became a lobbyist for the major oil companies known as the seven sisters. Pearl...

The late 1970s were the height of the Cold War between America and the Soviet Union. However, set against the backdrop of this simplistically bipolar world, FIREBIRD relates a love story that ultimately questions the binaries that are often equally, naively imposed on relationships. As the impulsive, charismatic and enigmatic fighter pilot, Roman, Robert Eades puts in a performance that beautifully captures all of those qualities. He is both daring and disarming, and ultimately opaque, as he relishes taking chances both personally and professionally. Eades' presentation nicely contrasts to the more timid and grounded Sergey played by Theo Walker, and the chemistry between the two of them is thoroughly credible. In this highly charged atmosphere, Sorcha Kennedy successfully manages to hold her own in the rather challenging role of Luisa. She succeeds in creating a character who is strong, resilient and an equal force in the triangle that emerges, although we never see her intimate...

Jean Genet based his 1947 play, The Maids , on the real story of an infamous 1933 murder in Le Mans when an abusive mistress and her daughter were killed by their two maids. This co-production between Jermyn Street Theatre and Reading Rep, which transfers to Reading at the end of January, captures all of Genet's absurdist horror, but it wavers uneasily between the realistic and the mannered in its presentation of this narrative of brutal social stratification and existential alienation. Anna Popplewell as Solange, the elder sister in service, brings a nicely restrained menace to her characterisation, and Charlie Oscar as younger sister, Claire, does a fine job of alternating between vulnerability and volatility as the two participate in the ceremony of dressing up as their employer and acting out her murder. Carla Harrison-Hodge hits some humorous notes as the obtuse, self-absorbed mistress of the household, but it is a performance that borders on parody. It reflects the kind of in...

Big Daddy's birthday is a night to remember! There are some strong performances in Tennessee Williams' classic, but it does seem like an unnecessarily drawn out affair. Daisy Edgar-Jones takes on the role of Maggie the cat, and she does a lot of cat-like crawling to make sure we get it. She is matched in these feline frolics by Seb Carrington who plays the ghost of Skipper, the real love of Maggie's husband, Brick. However, the constant stage presence of Skipper's spirit does seem an unnecessarily heavy-handed way of reminding us of his haunting importance. While Edgar-Jones' portrayal manages to wring a lot of the fury and frustration out of the role of Maggie, her scenes with husband, Brick, played by Kingsley Ben-Adir, never quite rise to the emotional intensity of his interaction with Big Daddy in Act II. It is notoriously difficult to play drunk, and Ben-Adir does so in a masterful performance that is wonderfully understated. His searing, soul-baring, exchanges...

Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love is a palimpsest of ostensible contrasts. The first act has the reigning Oxford intellectuals (Jowett, Pater, Ruskin and Ellis) playing croquet whereas the second act shows a group of London press lords playing billiards. However, in both instances the real game is the same – power. The currency may be ideas or money, but the object is identical. Similarly, Stoppard sets up a parallelism between Oscar Wilde the rebel, who was actually a dramatic and social conformist, with AE Housman, the apparent conformist who quietly rebelled. Despite quite distinctive presentations their differences are more superficial than substantive. Housman's apparent internal contradictions are also similarly exposed as a matter of surfaces. The scientific scholar driven to perfect ancient texts and to seek the creator of love poetry in ancient authors such as Catullus, Propertius or Gallus, is himself an artist who in his poetry becomes an inventor of love. The di...

Enjoyment of a parody is often proportional to one's degree of familiarity with the original, and that is certainly the case here. The performances are awesome and Jack Baldwin and Laurence Pears transition from one Jurassic Park character to another with astonishing facility. And then, they manage to become dinosaurs! Their professionalism and comic timing are awesome, and the ability to use only the most basic of props to create the film's scenes is terrific. Both actors display an extraordinary manic energy, and both manage to engage the audience's imagination. The display of how sound effects are created is also great fun, and, truth be told, our attention did occasionally wander over to watching the terrific work of Charlie Ives. Unfortunately, however, the trio's efforts cannot make up for the fact that there is too much dependence on the audience knowing the Jurassic Park story and being able to identify all the characters from taglines, vocal intonations or o...

It is easy to understand why Rick Riordan's story is so popular with pre-teens. Percy is a twelve-year-old with dyslexia and ADHD who doesn't have many friends, and he has been kicked out of several schools. Then, unexpectedly, he discovers that he is actually the son of a Greek God. He attends a summer camp where he meets other half-blood kids like himself, and he ends up going on a quest that puts him in conflict with Hades and some of the other characters from Greek mythology. This is a delightfully empowering tale full of weird and wonderful characters, while also being a neat introduction to the world of ancient myths. However, this musical version has a serious challenge in trying to live up to the power of young imaginations, and it only partially succeeds. This is a show that cries out for some serious magic, and unfortunately most of the effects seem rather low-budget. Percy's pen that becomes a sword is fun, but the Minotaur is simply neither very scary, nor very ...