Victoria Smurfit and Callum Scott Howells in Ghosts, Lyric Hammersmith. Photo: Helen Murray

Gary Owen's new version of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts gives the play a contemporary setting, in a rural west country seaside location where low cloud ironically blocks the view from the large panoramic windows of Helena Alving's (Victoria Smurfit) minimalist lounge.

Story details have also been given a modern twist.

The orphanage Helena is building to honour her late husband in Ibsen's play is now a children's hospital. Jacob (Deka Walmsley) wants his daughter, Reggie (Patricia Allison) to leave Helena's employment and help him set up a holiday home renovation business rather than open a hotel for retired sailors. And syphilis becomes depression and anxiety.

Pastor Manders becomes Anderson (Rhashan Stone), a lawyer working for the charitable trust which will run the hospital. He's also an old flame of Helena's from before she married. Oswald or 'Oz' her son (Callum Scott Howells) is an actor rather than an artist whose career is currently on a down.

The script is contemporary and, particularly in the first half, witty with plenty of humorous lines. 

However, it is the relationships where this version of Ghosts feels the most 'now'.

Kedar Williams-Stirling and Keelan Kember in Thanks For Having Me, Riverside Studios. Photo: Oliver Kember

Young love and lust and what it means to be in a relationship are the themes in actor/writer Keelan Kember's new comedy play Thanks For Having Me.

Cashel (Kember) interrupts his friend Honey's (Kedar Williams-Stirling) attempts to get his date Maya (Adeyinka Akinrinade) into bed when he turns up heartbroken, having just split up from his girlfriend.

Honey is confident around women and has his signature routine for getting his dates to sleep with him, which involves pretending he doesn't do that sort of thing, but he can't commit and never sees anyone more than a few times.

Cashel is a neurotic overthinker who falls sickeningly in love but is loyal.

Honey can't let go of control and be vulnerable, and Cashel can't temper his emotions; he doesn't have much of a filter.

Jab, Park Theatre. Photo: Steve Gregson

Five years on from the start of COVID, that time seems both like another life and yet sharply familiar in James McDermott's play Jab.

It's long enough ago that we can at least laugh about it. Boris Johnson's gaffs, dodgy haircuts and Barnard Castle all become amusing quips.

But it's recent enough to still capture the fear and divide: The rising death toll, lockdown challenges and the safety of the vaccine.

Jab is COVID told through a domestic lens. Anne (Kacey Ainsworth) works for the NHS, and her husband Don (Liam Tobin) has a shop that doesn’t make any money and is more of a hobby than a business.

Their kids have grown up and flown the nest, and they are generally content. They laugh together, playfully poke fun and occasionally dance around the living room. 

But the extraordinary situation puts pressure on their relationship heightening long standing niggles into bigger grievances.

Anne is the breadwinner. Don doesn’t do much now that his shop's closed, and that’s a source of tension, as is Don's sexual appetite and Anne's lack thereof.

Performed with a mix of finally tuned rapport and tension between Kacey Ainsworth and Liam Tobin, bickering turns into barbs, arguments into rows, particularly when Don's attitude towards vaccines is factored in. It becomes a primary source of divide - and drama.

Retrograde. Stanley Townsend, Ivanno Jeremiah & Oliver Johnstone. Photo: Marc Brenner.

Ryan Calais Cameron's play Retrograde is set in 1950s Hollywood when a twenty-something struggling actor, Sidney Poitier (Ivanno Jeremiah), is on the verge of signing a deal with a film studio.

Peppy young writer Bobby (Oliver Johnstone) is on his last chance and has a great part for Sidney, one that is different from the usual, stereotypical roles set aside for black actors.

Lawyer and fixer Mr Parks (Stanley Townsend) has the contract that could launch both of them but before Sidney signs it, there are terms attached.

Retrograde might be set 70-odd years ago but there is a lot that resonates today, particularly with what is going on over the pond.

Back then, alongside racial segregation, it was a time of fear, when those who didn't believe and endorse the 'right' things weren't only ostracised, but their careers were crushed by blacklisting, and they could potentially end up in jail.

McCarthyism made it the Wild West of chosen morals, and personal beliefs could not be separated from the ability to do certain jobs.

Taking the right stance for people and businesses was everything–or suffer the consequences. Sound familiar?

Theatre director Scott Le Crass

Theatre director Scott Le Crass tells me about directing James McDermott’s play Jab a second time, whether comedy is harder than drama and what his dream play to direct would be.

Jab, which is set during the pandemic, originally opened at the Finborough Theatre last year, and now it's coming to the Park Theatre. What's it like directing it a second time, and are you making any changes?

Scott Le Crass: I really like to revisit plays that I've previously directed because having that time in between gives you a little bit of distance. I think that’s quite interesting because firstly, your life experiences sometimes shape how you work.

I'm different from the person I was a year ago in the way that I might see things.

And also, I think what's really interesting is there are lots of things online at the moment talking about it being five years since the pandemic, so there's an extra year distance that people have got.

The way I think we see it is slightly altered, so it's nice to be able to approach it again.

But not a lot has changed; there are a few sequences in terms of movement, but the text and the story are pretty much the same. Some of the design is different as well.

Jab is a dark, domestic comedy. Is it harder directing comedy than a straight drama?

I think comedy can span so many different things. Comedy is quite broad, and I think that as long as you're true with that, that’s something that will see you through in a really positive way.

Comedy is about truth, so in answer to that question, I think it can be harder because sometimes we feel like there's a tendency to lean into the laughs or play to the audience. And I think black comedy, in particular, is quite specific in its tone and its approach. So, I think it can be harder, yes.

Julia McDermott in Weather Girl. Credit: Pamela Raith Photography

The character in Brian Watkins' monologue play Weather Girl is called Stacey (Julia McDermott) which was slightly disconcerting because that's my real name (Stan is a nickname), and it's not the sort of name usually used for stage characters.

But, the fact that it is disconcerting is appropriate, Weather Girl is a disconcerting dichotomy of a play.

Stacey is a California weather girl who has to get up at 4am and be cheery while wild fires are wrecking homes and lives around her. 

In the studio, she is all smiles, quips and glamour, but outside, she is keeping an eye on her homeless, drug-addict mom, who has forgotten who she is. Stacey always sips from a large, fancy water bottle, except it actually contains prosecco.

When she is offered a 'promotion' in desert-city Phoenix, it tips her over the edge, and her life spirals into a car crash - figuratively and literally.

Jamie Bisping, Sara Hazemi, Paul Thornley and Ruby Stokes in The Habits, Hampstead Theatre. Photo: Genevieve Girling

The Habits is set in a board game cafe where Jess (Ruby Stokes), Maryn (Sara Hazemi) and Milo (Jamie Bisping) meet to escape into a world of Dungeons & Dragons dwarfs, wizards and the mysterious Nightmare King.

Cafe owner Dennis (Paul Thornley) is also running away from something, and it's not just the fact that everyone else is playing Monopoly.

But real life is knocking against the door of their created fantasy landscape. It's there in the banter and bickering about Brexit, politics and gender, which influences how they treat other characters in the game.

There is also the real life that is closer to home that tumbles into the game through their conversations and phone call interruptions: the stressful job, the reluctance to commit to anything and the raw grief.

The stage is set up 'in the round' with just a table and chairs in the middle. Knowing the game-playing setting, I was a little worried at the start that the characters might spend a lot of their time sitting with their back to chunks of the audience. 

Luke Thallon in Hamlet for the RSC

I've seen a lot of Hamlet's, and watching director Rupert Goold and Luke Thallon's take on 'the Dane', it struck me that we haven't really had a mad Hamlet for a long time.

The prince might say that he is putting on an antic disposition and, as Polonius observes, make 'pregnant' comments, but there is something painfully cracked in his behaviour. There is an edge and danger that points to loss of mental control...but more of that in a moment.

It is a stormy production set on a large ship called the Elsinore in the early 1900s. The text has been tweaked with references to water replacing those about the ground and earth. The stage tilts as danger swells. 

The action is compressed into an evening and night, which heightens the tension and makes sense of Hamlet's tussle with his faculties - a lot happens very quickly.

Sensible edits, such as the players only performing the mime rather than repeating the play with words, make this a pacey production. There is no distraction of relations with Norway; the focus is very much on the royal court and Hamlet's deteriorating behaviour.

Luke Thallon's is a Hamlet that made my heart ache for the pain he seemed to be going through. He starts in a melancholy grief and descends from there to a point where he develops twitches and ticks as if the mental anguish is too much for his body to bear.

I've seen productions where the same actor plays the ghost and Claudius. Here, the ghost (Anton Lesser) pops up as other characters, causing Hamlet to recoil. Does it suggest his mind playing tricks on him, a form of paranoid delusion?

The last play I saw Cate Blanchett in, I described at the time as a 'tedious two hours', so I was keen to see her in something different - and better.

In The Seagull at the Barbican Theatre, she isn't the only star casting joined by Tom Burke (Trigorin), Emma Corrin (Nina), Tanya Reynolds (Masha), Jason Watkins (Pyotr) and Kodi Smit McPhee (Konstantin).

It's a modern adaptation of Chekhov's play by Duncan Macmillan and Thomas Ostermeier, which shifts the focus more onto the women and emphasises themes of the sense of self and purpose through art and creativity.

Set on the lakeside next to a pontoon which juts out into the audience, there is a tall crop of rushes as a backdrop, which provides a 'secret' entry point to what appears to be a fairly secluded and idyllic spot to hang out on warm days and evenings. The rushes are also a place for people to hide and eavesdrop on those lounging on the assortment of chairs.

The pontoon is where Konstantin stages his fateful play.

But there is a little less Konstantin in this production; his absences suit the 'out of sight, out of mind' attitude of his mother, Irina (Blanchett). Her eyes are only for the slouchy-shorts-wearing Trigorin.

Deliciously OTT

Blanchett ratchetts up the 'look at me' side of famous actress Irina. She is deliciously OTT but not in a hammy way.

What she wears is a combination of attention-grabbing and 'dress for the age you want to be'. It's urban and young, and out of place in the country, like Irina.

Shalisha James-Davis, David Shields and Emma Pallant in Punch. Photo: Marc Brenner

Jacob Dunne (David Shields) is an unruly youth from 'The Meadows' in Nottingham, an experimentally-designed, 1970s council estate that has created rat runs of dark alley for youths to play or move around undetected.

It's described as like being in a live video game by Jacob, and is a place with two paths: keep your head down or drugs and gangs. Struggling in school and seeing no future prospects, he chooses the latter, using his fists to maintain status within his friendship group. 

A good night out is drink, drugs and a fight until, with just one punch, tragedy strikes.

What life could or should Jacob have after he has killed James Hodgkinson, a young man out for a drink with his dad after watching the cricket? Besides a short prison sentence, what justice is there for James's parents, Joan (Julia Hesmondhalgh) and David (Tony Hirst)?

James Graham's play, Punch, is based on Jacob Dunne's book Right From Wrong and was originally produced for Nottingham Playhouse.

The fast-paced first half uses clever lighting by Robbie Butler and movement by Leanne Pinder to transport us into the world of Jacob - school, estate, church, pub, clubs and home with his despairing mum (Emma Pallant).

A more contemplative second half carries punches of a different sort. This isn't about retaliation for the loss of an innocent life but taking a much more challenging but ultimately more fulfilling conciliatory path.