What happens in a family that has no “cultural capital”? If it lacks the education and knowledge to make sense of the world; if it lacks the emotional skills to manage its internal relationships; if it is not so much dysfunctional as non-functional, what will happen to its members? Sam Shepherd’s 1985 A Lie of the Mind explores this question, through two families that are widely separated in geography – Montana and southern California, but joined by their joint hopelessness and haplessness.

There are no obvious clues in this production as to why the winner of the JMK Award 2006 for Young Directors, Jamie Harper, chose this as the award show, but given the current state of America, and its bemused, confused, baffled blundering around the international stage, it is hard not to read it as metaphor. But if this was intended, some clues should have been provided.

But perhaps this production is instead just meant as a portrait of human self-destruction and mental collapse. It certainly does that powerfully – perhaps too powerful for the intimate space of the BAC. I know that domestic violence is a terrible thing, but having its victim very nearly in my lap, pathetically sobbing for the man who gave her brain damage, is perhaps setting the emotional volume rather too high.
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A tragic, pathetic fate for a young girl strangled by social convention and propriety; an explosion of youthful sexual experimentation and hormonal energy; radical statements about traditional social structures wrapped up in slapstick farce. Those are the key elements of Frank Wedekind’s Spring Awakening, which has just opened at the Union Theatre.

So radical is this script that it is hard to believe it was written in 1891; far less surprising that it was not performed unexpurgated in the UK until 1974. The challenges for the Union Theatre are today, however, not from moral guardians but from a play demanding a huge cast (17 actors in total), many playing young adolescents, and embracing this huge range of moods and registers.

It is a challenge that director Aoife Smyth and producer Sasha Regan, and their actors, have risen magnificently, aided by a lyrical translation by Edward Bond. (So often it seems impossible to render German into “natural” English, but he’s managed it here.)

If there’s one single lesson from the play it is that Philip Larkin wasn’t saying anything new about parents and children with his “they fuck you up” line … “Parents are bringing children into the world so they’ll have something to shout at,” complains one young character.
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Late Fragment has a lot going for it. There’s a topical hook – its
“hero”, Matthew, arrives on stage dust-spattered and debris-battered, having
escaped from a World Trade Centre Tower on 9/11. The role is played by Alex Zorbas with powerful intensity but some subtlety.

His materialistic wife Marta (Kelli Kerslake), whose first thought is of the
financial implications, is also given a decent degree of ambiguity as
Francine Volpe’s play progresses. Their relationship and its inevitable
decline with the mental health of Matthew whose personal faultlines are
unable to bear the earthshaking national event with gripping intensity.
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by Jonathan Grant

Returning to the Barbican after its sell-out success during the Young Genius season, Vestuport Theatre Company’s production of Georg Bűchner’s unfinished masterpiece Woyzeck charts the downfall of one of life’s erstwhile survivors. The eponymous hero earns a crust, and nothing more, as servant to the brash Captain. Additionally, he is forced to allow the sadistic Doctor to perform medically dubious experiments on his body and mind.

His poverty makes Woyzeck meek. His social standing makes him amoral in the eyes of the Captain, and “nothing more than a dog” to the Doctor, which in turn perpetuates Woyzeck’s timidity to the oppression he suffers and his appearance of stupidity.

Yet, the Doctor and Captain are known only by their titles. They have no proper names. It is they who lack humanity, compassion and morality. They manipulate Woyzeck for their own benefit, not for any social gain, and their own strict moralities prevent them from seeing Woyzeck’s deeper good. They berate him.
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Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra – it is one of those defining images of an age of womanhood – of the sultry, dangerous femme fatale who’s certain to consume, like a black widow spider, any man who falls into her web. It is an image, an ideal, that any actor playing the Egyptian Queen has to confront, deal with, and overcome, if she’s to put her own stamp upon the role.

Frances Barber in the Globe’s new Antony & Cleopatra takes to the challenge with a passion. No inch of flesh goes unwriggled, no sideways glance unsmouldered, no lascivious gesture unexercised, but she does all of this with such heart and enthusiasm that it never descends into parody. She’s supported beautifully by her two key attendants – Charmian (Frances Thorburn), the young beauty learning from her queen’s every move and Iras (Rhiannon Oliver), the plain and faintly motherly foil to both of them.

But what is a stage full of male actors – of the ruling Roman triumvirs, Antony, Octavius and Lepidus, and the upstart Pompey – who are deciding the fate of the entire new Roman empire, going to do to match this, to provide balance and matching masculine power to the evening? Neither they, Shakespeare, nor the director Dominic Dromgoole has found an answer to this challenge.

Jack Laskey manages an interesting, charistmatic interpretation of Octavius, the extremely bright but inexperienced young sprog finding his way as a ruler in a dangerous world, knowing too well he can’t afford the complications of emotion of any kind. Lepidus is an adequate old drunk; Pompey’s short, ringletted appearance adds a dash of piratical glamour.
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If you’ve ever worked in a newspaper office, the setting of Before Bristol will feel immediately familiar: mouldering, tottering piles of old editions; bins overflowing with the detritus of fast food; a general air of grime. The characters too will be familiar: the slightly embittered old hack for whom Fleet Street never called, the highly capable woman whose title in no way reflects her role or abilities; the old plodder who’s settled into waiting for his pension.

Perhaps too familiar – the “bright young thing” here is, contrary to stereotype, a petulant rebel – but otherwise these characters would, from their descriptions, be mere stereotypes. Yet writer Robert Meakin, and the solid, six-strong team of actors, does an excellent job of fleshing out the bones of apparent cliche.

All is not well at the Heaton Express, despite the recent success (proudly chronicled by the front pages on the wall) in stopping the building of a destructive bypass through the town. Brian, the editor (Jonathan Oliver), is the man for whom Fleet Street never called, and he’s got the short fuse of the permanently disappointed, although its not quite that simple, for underlying is a fierce attachment to his town that shines through in a grudging sort of passion. Geoffrey (a fine performance by Richard Walker) is the solid decent type – at least he was solid until his ongoing divorce proceedings started to shake him apart.

Holding the office together, emotionally and practically, is Kate (Victoria Meakin). Her common sense and stability desert her, however, when it comes to relationships. She has a penchant for married men who never live up to their promises to leave their wives, thus it is hardly surprising that she should have linked up with Phil (Yannick Lawry), the convincingly slimy but charismatic owner’s representative.
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