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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London in the January of 1594 was a dark place. Two years of cold weather and small harvests had left the poor anxious and restless. The ageing Gloriana, who refused to even think about who might follow her, sowed political anxiety among the great and the good – heads tended to roll around succession crises. The national euphoria of the defeat of the Armada seemed a distant memory. Plague threatened, and would soon close the theatres.

The Globe’s new production of Titus Andronicus — a play as gloomy, and gory, as any Shakespeare produced — plays up those elements. The theatre is closed in, almost suffocated with black wrappings that extend across the sky, blocking out the spring evening sunshine and producing a gloom that must have been close to a January afternoon of 1594. Incence redolent of blood sacrifice chokes this closed-in space. It is indeed a dismal a day as ere I saw.

Yet this is also a production that has something of the feel of a modern horror movie. Every one of the many bloody scenes of Titus Andronicus is played for full dramatic, gut-wrenching effect. Yet what is amazing about this is that nothing is electronic – all of the sounds are produced by using more or less natural materials. The composer Django Bates says that a range of traditional horns (many of which are displayed to the audience), “lumps of metal, metres of birch-wrapped tubing, circular pots with long wire tails, a saw, some bendy sticks, metal files” are his instruments.

This could all too easily, for an audience reared on animatronics and fancy 3D, have been an embarrassingly amateurish disaster, but instead the gory scenes are this production’s triumph. I fear the sight of Demetrius and Chiron being treated like the animals in an abbatoir – strung up by the heels, then their throats almost casually cut, to the accompaniment of blood-chilling sounds — will remain in my head for some time. Were these characters with which we had any sympathy it would be almost unbearable (and indeed for some perhaps it was – there were a few green faces around me), but Shakespeare has of course made sure by this point that these two – who raped and hideously mutilated Lavinia – will not be mourned.
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by Jonathan Grant

Life. One minute it’s going fabulously, and the next, without warning, it’s falling apart in front of your eyes and you’re both powerless to stop it and oblivious to it until it’s too late. That’s the situation Drew McKay finds himself in in Jackie Kane’s compassionate drama This to This, now playing at the Union Theatre.

Drew (Scott Ainslie) has more blessings than most; a good job and a happy home life. Until, that is, his girlfriend’s mother Peggy (played with a compassionate grace by Rosalie Jorda) is struck with dementia. Unable to fend for herself any more, her daughter Jen (Jackie Kane) dutifully quits her job to look after her. However, the emotional burden this puts on her and her relationship with Drew, and the financial burden of having to live as a single-income family, soon begin to show.

What unfolds is a sad and touching portrayal of one couple’s walk down a rocky path to break-up when circumstances get in the way. More than that, Drew and Jen, supported by the sexy Rachel (Melanie Gray), Drew’s good friend and boss Phil Brooks (Simon Anderson), and his wife Nicky (Chandrika Chevli), are an allegory. In This to This they begin as the couple mastering life. But it soon becomes obvious that all the “big” decisions they thought they were making, about life, work, kids, even their own relationship, were being made for them by coincidence, chance and habit.

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by Jonathan Grant

Silverland is set in the near future, in a time of global warming and impending apocalypse. London is in anarchy and the realisation of its Olympic dream is about to turn into a nightmare. Benjamin Davies charts the tales of some of those affected by this forthcoming doom, and does so over the course of five ever-changing seasons, culminating in a final, frost-bitten, spring.

Five stories, of two comic ravers, one stockbroker complete with feisty prostitute, one crazed scientist, one lonely and depressed fisherman’s wife, and a photographer and his architect girlfriend, make up the entirety of this play. Unfortunately, no intelligent or interesting storylines, no charm, and no real wit can be included in that rather unique mix; this play fizzles out long before our ravers are done dancing to their “phat choons”.

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