London theatre reviews

Dante or Die’s resurrected 2013 show feels like a sweet throwback to the glory days of the site-specific theatre era: that is to say, plays that are written in response to the specific, non-theatre building they’re staged in. 

Alreet pet? First up, an admission. I might have been born in Newcastle and raised in Gateshead, but given my lifelong support for the other football team in Tyne and Wear, you’d be well within your rights to question whether I might harbour a slight bias against Gerry and Sewell, the stage play based on Geordie classic Purely Belter. 

I have in the past been guilty of suggesting all Cirque du Soleil shows are the same, but the return of the insect-themed extravaganza OVO does in fact demonstrate the Quebecois circus giants are capable of change…

Putting a film western on stage is an odd idea that doesn’t seem any less odd having seen High Noon, an adaptation of the classic allegorical 1952 movie starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly. 

In An Interrogation, his debut as a writer-director, Jamie Armitage tackled the police procedural, which is not something you see in the theatre very often. Now he’s back with an even more ambitious oddity in the form of A Ghost in Your Ear, an MR James-ish horror story with a mischievous metatheatrical gleam in its eye.

Let’s start with the positives. The performances in Al Miller’s revival of Lyle Kessler’s 1983 play Orphans are absolutely tremendous.

Alan Ayckbourn is frequently referred to as ‘the English Chekhov’, a reflection of the melancholy that lies at the heart of his plays and their characters. But that’s not the whole story…

The Orange Tree’s artistic director Tom Littler brings the same assured touch to Richard Sheridan’s eighteenth-century comedy of identity confusion as he did to Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer this time two years ago. He’s aided by a top-drawer cast who know how to tap into the play’s brand of jubilant absurdity.

It would be a mistake to say the humour in Cole Escola’s massive hit Broadway comedy has been lost in translation to the West End: there was a lot of laughter when I caught Oh, Mary! on a Wednesday matinee. However, I’m afraid it was lost in translation to me. 

Away from the burningly intense social interrogation of Inspector Goole, JB Priestly has plenty to offer, including When We are Married, a somewhat dated but thoroughly delightful social comedy that stands out from the period pack by sheer weight of northernness.