In Jack Thorne's The Motive and the Cue, we are given not one but two plays. Set around the rehearsal period for the famed Broadway production of Hamlet, directed by Sir John Gielgud (Mark Gatiss) and starring Richard Burton (Johnny Flynn), you go behind the scenes as they get ready for opening night, and you get snippets of Hamlet as they rehearse.

Gielgud's star is waning, and working with Burton, while an unlikely pairing, is a calculated move to boost his career. Burton is looking to add credibility to his starry career by working with Gielgud.

He starts the play by apologising to the rest of the cast for the crowd of fans outside the rehearsal room. He's recently married Elizabeth Taylor  (Tuppence Middleton), which has elevated his star status further.

The plan is for an unconventional production of Shakespeare's classic play (unconventional for the time). Gielgud wants a stripped-back set akin to the rehearsal room and for the actors to wear their rehearsal attire rather than costumes. (Yes, it's meta.)

Simple ideas and complications

Naturally, the 'relaxed' simplicity causes complications with the choices of rehearsal outfits becoming more considered and tailored. 

Alex Mugnaioni, Samuel Collings and Patricia Allison in Jules and Jim, Jermyn Street Theatre. Photo by Steve Gregson

Jules and Jim is an exploration of love and friendship told through the lens of three people living an unconventional lifestyle. Jules (Samuel Collings) is a German poet who meets Frenchman Jim (Alex Mugnaioni) in Paris.

They share a love of art and travel together until Kath (Patricia Allison) arrives with an enigmatic smile that mirrors the one they saw on a statue of a Goddess in Greece. Naturally, they both fall in love with her.

Jim has a history of falling for Jules' girlfriends, but when Jules says Kath is out of bounds for him, you can easily guess what is going to happen.

Over 90 minutes, we follow the trio across the decades that straddle the first world war. They move about, live in Paris, Berlin and rural Germany, visit each other, marry, take lovers, they have children and miscarriages.

Solid friendships

But all the time, they are open with each other about their relationships and feelings. There are flares of jealousy, but nothing seems to rock the foundations of their friendship and love. 

Dancing at Lughnasa, National Theatre, April 2023

Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa is a memory play told from the perspective of Michael (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor), nephew to five sisters living in a cottage near the fictional town of Ballybeg. 

He recalls a particular childhood Summer which shaped the future of the family.

His narrative isn't always linear, sometimes he tells you what is coming before it happens, injecting a layer of melancholy and foreboding underneath the laughter, hope and dancing that breaks out when the wireless decides to work. 

Kate (Justine Mitchell) is the 'matriarch' and breadwinner, a teacher and a strict follower of social and religious values. Maggie (Siobhán McSweeney) is the homemaker and fun-bringer who loves riddles.

Chris (Alison Oliver) is the unmarried mother of Michael, a romantic prone to depression after the fleeting and unplanned visits of Gerry (Tom Riley), Michael's father.

Agnes (Louisa Harland) and Rose (Bláithín Mac Gabhann) knit gloves to sell in the town earning very little, and the latter has a simple, child-like naiveté despite her age.

The sisters are a tight affectionate unit, each with their particular chores. Teasing, jokes, gossip - and the dancing - cement the narrow landscape of their lives. 

It is pertinent that the central narrative drivers are the arrival of men into the story. There are Gerry's sporadic visits and the return home of Jack (Ardal O'Hanlon), the sisters' brother.

Robert Boulton, Henry Davis and Louise Hoare in Snowflakes, Park Theatre, April 2023 (c) Jennifer Evans

Robert Boulton's play Snowflakes takes cancel culture to the extreme. A start-up business metes out 'justice' for offences and offending on social media. Live streamed, the 'defendant' is given a chance to put their case and the audience votes on whether they can walk or are killed on camera.

The 'hitman/hitwoman' decide on the style of death. Yes, it is dark.

Waking up in a hotel room having spent the night with a woman that isn't his wife, Tony (Henry Davis) is ambushed and drugged by Marcus (played by Boulton) and Sarah (Louise Hoare).

The former is an old hand at this 'work' and relishes it. Sarah is on her first job and wants to do everything by the book, but that seems to include riling Marcus by accusing him of disliking women which had me jumping ahead of the story.

Setting up the equipment while discussing the job, their route into it and the pros and cons turns into rather a long preamble to the actual 'trial'. It stretches the tension of the first half a little too thin.

But when Tony is conscious, and events truly kick off, it is not the most relaxing watch having events unfold in such close proximity (this is in the Park's studio theatre).

Having an unseen digital audience voting on the 'defendant's' fate is an interesting idea. Keyboard trolling is taken to the extreme; it highlights the ease with which people can separate themselves from the real impact of their actions if viewed via a screen.

And our two assassins carry out the audience's will; it's a job like a judge handing down the results of a jury trial.

The first thing I said to my friend during the interval of Private Lives at the Donmar Warehouse was, 'I don't remember this being a play about domestic violence'.

We'd just witnessed Elyot (Stephen Mangan) and Amanda (Rachael Stirling) having a physical fight which included Elyot grabbing Amanda by the throat and throwing her onto a sofa.

This wasn't slapstick violence which you might expect in a comedy of this type but vicious, and it wasn't funny.

A woman was overheard asking an usher why there wasn't a content warning. There is one, but it's tucked away on the website to avoid spoilers.

And it's not a play I'd think to look for content warning.

You expect verbal cuts and bruises as bitterly divorced couple Elyot and Amanda find themselves in neighbouring rooms while on their respective honeymoons. But the physical fighting feels like an odd choice.

The play is, in essence, about a couple who can't live without each other but equally can't live with each other - despite agreeing on a 'time-out' word when they are bickering.

Grace Saif with Tom Mothersdale in Sea Creatures, Hampstead Theatre, April 2023, Photo: Marc Brenner

Cordelia Lynn's play is set in an old fisherman's cottage, which has been extended over the years and now includes a glass-fronted kitchen area from where you can take in the view of the sea.

The cottage and its contemporary extension are a bit like its inhabitants: A modern family with a love of old stories and myths full of sea creatures like mermaids and selkies.

It's a holiday retreat owned by Shirley (Geraldine Alexander), a professor who doesn't like anyone in her office unless invited.

Her partner Sarah (Thusitha Jayasundera), is an artist who paints urban landscapes when she is in the country and the country when she's in the city. Toni (Grace Saif) is Shirley's youngest daughter and 'consciously naive' (she behaves like someone much younger), and her sister George (Pearl Chanda) is unhappily pregnant.

Then there is the third sibling Robin, whose whereabouts is unknown. Her boyfriend, Mark (Tom Mothersdale), is staying in her room in the hope that she turns up.

And that's kind of the play, the wait and the whereabouts of Robin.

A Little Life, Harold Pinter Theatre April 2023

A Little Life, the adaptation of Hanya Yanagihara's tome of a novel, is not an easy watch. It's taken me two days to feel able to revisit it because of the subject matter and ultimately how the story made me feel.

I couldn't record my usual 60-second review because I was too emotionally raw, as the video below captures.

It's a play with severe content warnings and it isn't a one-off event that earns the label; this is a play that is challenging throughout. It explores sexual violence and self-harm, among other things, and it is explicit in its descriptions and depictions - little is implied.

But it's also a play of enduring friendships, love and support.

Jude St Francis (James Norton) is a brilliant lawyer. He was orphaned as a young child, brought up in care and has problems with his legs, which means he sometimes uses a wheelchair.

Solid friendships

He has three very good friends: Willem (Luke Thompson), an actor, JB (Omari Douglas), an artist and Malcolm (Zach Wyatt), an architect. He is also loved by his old university professor Harold (Zubin Varla), who wants to formally adopt him and is diligently cared for by his doctor Andy (Emilio Doorgasingh).

The latter knows more than the others about Jude from treating him, but the details of his early life are still scant.

Hamlet, starring Billy Howle, a live recording from Bristol Old Vic

The fat has been cut from this Bristol Old Vic production of Hamlet, leaving the meat of the play. There is no Fortinbras subplot, the ghost and player scenes are stripped to the bare essentials.

It's a minimalist, stark modern set, just doors and a staircase - although the way it is filmed, you don't get to appreciate it in perhaps the same way you would watching it at the theatre. What you do get is the close-ups of the actors.

The only face you don't see is the ghost which is an interesting choice; Hamlet (Billy Howle) doesn't doubt for a second this cloaked, hooded figure is his father, but is it? Does he just want it to be?

Howle's Hamlet, in this trimmed play, becomes a man of action; there is little room for confirmation, doubt and indecision. In fact, he is manic, angry and enraged - mad in purpose or a loose canon?

This contrasts with the cool, quiet of Finbar Lynch's Claudius. If he didn't confess, you wouldn't believe he had a hand in Old Hamlet's murder rather, he is protecting the realm from an heir who swings from irritating to unhinged.

Dyllón Burnside and Danny Lee Wynter in BLACK SUPERHERO, Royal Court, March 2023. Photo: Johan Persson

"I'm holding out for a hero" is Bonnie Tyler's famous song, and it could be the theme tune for David (Danny Lee Wynter) in BLACK SUPERHERO. He's long held a torch for friend King (Dyllón Burnside), who is playing superhero Craw in a low-brow movie franchise.

"I trained at Julliard," he moans while secretly enjoying being recognised.

When King reveals that he and his travel-writer husband Steven (Ben Allen) have decided on an open relationship, David is a beneficiary of King's new liberal sleeping arrangements.

But can David keep himself together long enough not to screw up the one thing he's dreamed about?

Danny Lee Wynter's debut play bursts onto the stage with banter and bitching between David, his sister Syd (Rochenda Sandall) and friend Raheem (Eloka Ivo), who are supposed to be on a night out with King.

Sharp and witty

It sets a crisp pace and witty tone with sharp one-liners as relationships and sex - particularly each other's - getting dissected.

Cyril Nri and Kirsty Rider in Further than the Furthest Thing at Young Vic March 2023. Photo:(c) Marc Brenner

In Shakespeare's Island play The Tempest, Caliban says: "Be not afeared, the isle is full of noises" should the inhabitants of the remote Atlantic island in Zinnie Harris' play be afraid of the noise under the water or something else?

The noise is undoubtedly distracting Bill (Cyril Nri) from the arrival home of nephew Francis (Archie Madekwe), who has been off-island in Cape Town for months. But Bill does seem to have a demeanour of general anxiety and mild panic - is it a result of past events?

Based loosely on actual events on Tristan da Cunha, the most remote inhabited island in the world, the island of the play offers a simple life where everyone has a patch of land and subsists on what they grow or catch, plus what supplies the occasional boat brings.

Francis' return from Cape Town is an exciting time for his Aunt Mill (Jenna Russell), it's an opportunity to tell him about all the things he's missed, and maybe he's brought some sugar.

The inhabitants have a particular way of speaking with a mixture of accents, there's Scottish, Irish and West Country in there: "How can an h'egg be as bad luck?"

It is both familiar and strange, the people quaint - but theirs is a peculiar life, mostly cut off from the rest of the world.

Francis doesn't bring sugar back to the island,  he brings a stranger, Mr Hansen (Gerald Kyd), a South African businessman who can do sleight-of-hand magic tricks. He wants to build a factory.