Regular reviews of new London theatre, from the West End and the National Theatre to the fringe, plus occasional dispatches from around the UK and beyond.

A fake budgie in a new cage

Medea/Medea, Gate Theatre, London

If only it could have stayed like this – all eerie restraint, insinuation and confusion. But the show can’t stay still forever and the director and his new directions start to take over. Tighe opens up his box of tricks and scatters them everywhere – we get elaborate vignettes, prolonged silences, miming, moaning, birdsong, babies crying, manic laughter, the constant ping of a microwave.

A war on two fronts

Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, Hampstead Theatre, London

Against Michael Taylor’s ever-changing sky, John Dove’s production is too reliant on the inherent nobility and tragic waste of the man in uniform. Rather than truly making us bleed for the characters presented, it tugs at our sadness of the abstract idea. These soldiers are too often manikins stilly representing a generation.

Accidentally empathetic

The Adventures of Wound-Man and Shirley, New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich

What Chris Goode has achieved is a story with so much to say that you needn’t notice quite how spectacularly well he’s saying it. With such gentle efficiency, heartfelt charm and modest deference, Goode could has all the makings of a ‘freelance social interventionist’ himself.

Gulped down gratefully

As You Like It, Globe Theatre, London

We are swept along by a carnival of lust, action, poetry and music: entertained by two sparring lovers, entranced by a shepherd’s philosophising and unexpectedly stopped in our tracks by a painful and delicate song.

A zest for knowledge

Arcadia, Duke of York Theatre, London

One leaves the show reeling - the brain buzzing even if the heart isn’t quite soaring – determined to question everything we once held true, to examine life anew and revel in all its certain uncertainties.

Singing isn’t enough

Been So Long, Young Vic Theatre, London

Walker has talent but it was never going to be unearthed in this type of show. The actors have charm but they belong in straight musicals and not this musical play. And although The Young Vic’s programming shows guts, it needs to make sure its shows have the goods to back these gutsy choices.

Fight and faith

Twenty-somethings and the recession

Playwright Ella Hickson, whose new play Eight explores the discontentment of privileged twenty-somethings, argues the recession will prove a stern test for a generation unused to hardship and lacking strong beliefs, but also an opportunity to work out what really matters and might be worth fighting for.

It all seems so distant

Under the Influence, Drum Theatre, Plymouth

The aim, of course, is to reveal the pretence involved, but the trouble is that the simulated party never abandons its own fakeness. It feels too choreographed to become infectiously real. Its wildness seems too forced; its recklessness, too stage-managed; its ebb and flow, too inorganic.

Constant humming of claustrophobia

Kursk, Young Vic, London

Kursk gives us a very interesting glimpse at what hyper-realism could do to and with theatre, as well as a very well-crafted, well-researched work - the producer, writer and co-directors visited two hunter-killer nuclear submarines to make sure to get the atmosphere right, and the sounds, the protocol, the fluid exchange of precise professional terms all testify to it.

Gloriously gut-churning

Thyestes, Arcola Theatre, London

It is fitting to the general character of Atreus’ and Thyestes’ family, and to the feelings evoked by it from ancient times through to Renaissance, that Hannah Clark’s set for this production recalls, with exactitude and gusto, the dirty basements lit by dangling lightbulbs recently seen in so many horror movies, from Hostel to the Saw series.

Perplexity in perpetuity

The Moon, The Moon, Southwark Playhouse, London

There is a definite debt to Pinter at work, as the kindness of strangers is subverted into a menace of unknown motives. Yet, it is Pinter as wrenched out of orbit by the strength of its surrealism, which prevents the addition of its elements.

The slight peevishness of librarians

The Last Hour, Battersea Arts Centre, London

The piece makes a virtue of its simplicity, simultaneously conjuring a plethora of individual understandings about the time of your life and a universal desire to share it with another. Not necessarily The Other, nor any old other, but an other somewhere in between.

Intelligibility over intelligence

Much Ado About Nothing, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, London

Like the citrus trees that sprout through the wooden stage, nature punctures performance and an unexpected maturity, even nobility, comes to fruition.

‘It’s not gonna end like this!’

I am Montana, Arcola Theatre, London

There are some striking ideas here about the nature of home and the latent need for family – in whatever guise that might come – but they are drowned out by the screaming, weeping and gun-fire. Hunter has confused exposing his characters with exploring them.

A whirlpool of anyways

The Poof Downstairs, Battersea Arts Centre, London

In effect, Haynes is apologising for theatre – even art as a whole – and, more specifically, for its failure to reflect a recognisable reality with any truth. Life, he demonstrates, is not neatly packagable into an hour-long studio-based piece or any other tidy, traditional medium.