By Natalie Bennett

If “every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”, then is every unhappy category of people unhappy in their own way? It would seem not, if Alexander Galin’s account of the lives of Russian street prostitutes, Stars in the Morning Sky, is to be believed. The stories of Anna, Maria, Klara and Laura are achingly similar to those we heard in so much detail recently in Britain after the Ipswich murders.

They are victims of poor parenting, of institutional abuse, of exploitation by “boyfriends”, of drug addiction. They survive, and keep themselves going, through a mixture of hard-headed calculation, mad dreams, fairy tales that they half-believe, and sometimes pure panic that matches accounts from British social workers of the lives of the women they try to help.

But there’s no helpful, friendly institutional figures in Eighties Russia – just the rough, much-exploited Valentina (Jan Hirst), half-hostess, half-jailer, whose unreliable policeman son Nikolai (Sean Hammond) is the only indicator of genuine authority, and an unimpressive one. The “working” women have been forced out of Moscow in the clean-up preceding the 1980 Moscow Olympics. That’s one thing that makes this production of Stars in the Morning Sky, the first, it is said, in translation, topical – no doubt a similar set of Chinese women are soon to endure similar treatment.
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By Jonathan Grant

“Thirty going on thirteen” – an oft-used criticism of many a modern-day man – is the scenario being explored in the high-tempo adaptation of Gombozicz’s classic 1937 novel Ferdydurke by the radical Polish theatre Teatr Provisorium at the Bloomsbury Theatre.

Our central character, Joey, is sent back as an adult to re-experience his school days in 1930s Poland. Awoken on a Tuesday morning, classical music filling the stage and flanked by a four-posted cage symbolising his new bounded reality, our protagonist finds himself re-living his right of passage to adulthood.

Beginning his new-found immaturity in a militaristic Soviet school, being taught “enrapturing” literature ad nauseam by the buffoonish Professor FIlidor, Joey, like all his contemporaries, shows only an interest in the elemental questions of life, death and topics of a sexual nature.

This frustration at the obligatory repression served to all minors on the battleground of the intergenerational war, festers within him until the energy typical of teenage boys erupts in a highly energetic and expressionist style.

The energy continues to flow through Janusz Oprynski and Witold Mazurkiewicz’s production at each stage of Joey’s path to adulthood as each scene, each life chapter, is separated by a confused melee and transition to greater sexual consciousness and self-awareness. And, as Joey ages, he continues to bring to the audience’s attention the absurdity of society’s imposed expectations on the lives of individuals and the fundamental baseness of humanity by unifying castes under the banner of sexual promiscuity.
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By Robert Bain

Meeting people on the internet is supposed to be the great 21st-century social phenomenon, but it strikes me as a contradiction in terms. Meeting people, surely, is something you do when you turn off the computer and go outside the house. It’s a view borne out in David Hauptschein’s The Playactor.

It all begins with the attractive and well-adjusted Margo arriving nervously in Philadelphia, from the other side of the United States, to meet her internet lover Charlie. It’s immediately crystal clear that she’s made a mistake. Charlie lives in a squalid apartment with his dozy, untrustworthy “friend” Judy, and his completely mad sister.

Instead of the whirlwind romance that she’s built herself up for, Margo is met with an awkward and impenetrable man who proceeds to confuse and frighten her, before promptly disappearing with his sister, leaving Margo alone.

The play starts promisingly. An attention to detail imbues everything from the beautifully crafted set to the actors’ nervous ticks. The characters are carefully drawn and well cast. It’s a shame, then, that the story seems to run out of places to go very quickly.
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By Natalie Bennett

Perhaps when you were young you’d get together with the neighbourhood kids, or the extended family, or maybe even in the school playground, and make up a play. There’d be a great deal of enthusiasm, and a not very coherent plot, since that was determined by each player’s interests.

One would be right into Westerns, so out would come the six-guns, another obsessed with the Ancient Egyptians, so that explained the mummy, then to top it all off there’d be the Cold War spy movie enthusiast, with complicated not to say incomprehensible explanations of motivation.

That’s pretty well what you get with Tuesdays! The Bar Where Everyone Knows Your Shame. It began last Monday with most of those elements, mixed in with some distinctly adult sexuality, if sexuality played for laughs.

Yet none of those above statements is a criticism. This is joyous, unself-conscious, utterly childish fun. The corniest line is played with such wholehearted enthusiasm that there’s nary a groan all night – just explosive guffaws.
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By Rebecca Law

Following a stint at the Swan in Stratford in spring 2006, Antony and Cleopatra, the second in the series of the RSC’s recreation of Shakespeare’s entire oeuvre, has moved to the larger setting of London’s Novello Theatre. Whilst critics claim that the production has lost much of the intimacy the former venue afforded it, director Gregory Doran does by all intents and purposes succeed in bringing us a beautifully crafted and intelligently interpreted version of Shakespeare’s other tale of all-consuming love.

This is a wonderfully acted, sensual production, which succeeds where others have failed. Not only does Doran bring us the central relationship between the two protagonists but balances passionate prowess with surrounding political warfare; the two of which are intended by Shakespeare to merge naturally and seamlessly.

Patrick Stewart as Mark Antony captures beautifully the essence of a man in love, thrust back to adolescent playfulness and allowing all else in his life to take a back seat. From overblown romantic gestures to the tiniest of physical movements, Stewart convinces us that he is captivated by Cleopatra, his queen. As the piece goes on, Stewart lives out the path of a man obviously in decline, both physically and mentally. His fury, as he trades political prowess for passion, is palpable.
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