Video review transcript:

It was great being back at the Bridge Theatre and getting to see one of my favourite plays, Richard II, this production starring Jonathan Bailey.

The Bridge Theatre is a fantastic, flexible performance space, and in this production, it's used really well. It's a thrust stage, bits of scenery and set are popping up from underneath the stage.

It's all done very, very seamlessly and slickly.

The actors leave at various different points, sometimes through the audience, sometimes they're in the audience. There's a lot going on, and I liked it for that.

It's a play of lots of contrast, contrast in costumes, styling, temperament and tone, particularly between Richard and Bolingbroke and within Richard himself.

Jonathan Bailey's portrayal plays a multi-faceted character with lots of different personality traits coming in.

Actor and writer Jack Holden had a huge hit with Cruise in 2022, and I think he might have done it again with Kenrex, which has transferred to the Southwark Playhouse from Sheffield.

Based on a true story in the small isolated town of Skidmore, Missouri, Ken Rex McElroy is a piece of work. He's a dangerous bully, sensitive to any slight, and engages in a menu of criminal behaviour: theft, intimidation, abduction and statutory rape among his indictments.

And yet, despite being hauled in front of the justice system 21 times, with the help of a clever lawyer and targeted threats, he always manages to get off.

Then, one day, he shoots the local greengrocer over a petty argument and it pushes the community over the edge.

Kenrex is a play of successful, skilful layers that combine to make something extraordinary. It's a gripping thriller of a story brought vividly to life by Jack Holden and musician John Patrick Elliot.

Jack Holden plays all the characters transforming in a blink with just a change of stance and voice. He transports you to Skidmore, painting a colourful picture of the town and the events from that fateful time with descriptions, radio broadcasts, phone calls, interrogations, and reenactments of key moments.

Lynn Faces, New Diorama. Photo Dom Moore

The opening song of the newly formed, chronically under-rehearsed punk band Lynn Faces is called Snazzy Cardigan. While not exactly a punk theme, it's conversely more because it subverts the genre stereotype. 

Lynn Faces, the play (with songs), is also punk in that it's about a woman attempting to break away from a toxic relationship. Rather than 'smash the Government', band founder Leah (Madeleine MacMahon) is learning to break away from her coercive, controlling boyfriend Pete. 

The play is set on stage during the band's first gig, where they start off wearing masks of the face of Lynn from Alan Partridge. Lynn, to Leah, is a symbol of someone who has more going on beneath the surface if only given a chance. 

Between the songs with their wonky timing and strange array of percussion instruments played by Shonagh (Millie Faraway), there is bickering and arguments about what to play next, unplanned 'crowd work' fillers and storming off to make angry phone calls.

The story of how and why the band formed is revealed, and tension slowly builds as Leah looks in danger of being sucked back into the toxic Pete loop, much to the exasperation of friend and keyboard player Ali (Peyvand Sadeghian).

Video transcript: Hayley Atwell and Tom Hiddleston are having so much fun in this production of Much Ado About Nothing at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane.

This is a playful, cheeky, party-themed production of Shakespeare's play.

And it's vibrant, it's acid pink in both its tone and its design.

There is this brilliant chemistry between the two leads. I loved all of their sparring and interaction, and they both get to shake their booties quite a bit.

There's a lot of dance, there's a lot of singing. It just bursts off the stage.

Video review transcript: How did Oedipus at the Old Vic compare to the production at the Wyndham's last year [starring Leslie Manville and Mark Strong]?

I think Wyndham's is definitely the winner for me.

This production at the Old Vic, starring Rami Malek and Indira Varma, mixes dance and play.

And at first, I loved the dance. And then I got frustrated with the dance, because the dance sequences go on for quite some time.

But then, as the play progressed, I just wasn't connecting with it. I didn't feel like there was any chemistry between the two leads, and I wasn't connecting with the characters.

I didn't really care what happened to them, to them, to be honest. I didn't feel like there was any shock or revelation in the same way that there was in the Wyndham's production.

And I found myself actually drawn to the dance and enjoying that more than the play itself.

Nikolay Mulakov in Vanya is Alive at Omnibus Theatre 5. Photo: Sergey Novikov

Alya is the mother of a soldier. Her son is alive and free. This is what she is told. This is what we are told via performer Nikolay Mulakov.

We are not told it's set in modern-day Russia, but it clearly is. We are also not told that Vanya is, in fact, dead, but it quickly becomes clear that this is the case.

The story is a tangle of lies from which to unpick the truth; the easier path is to believe the lie. Is that how it happens? Is that how lies become the truth?

Nikolay Mulakov's performance is stripped back, quiet and mostly still. It draws you straight to the words, to imagining Alya's story.  We hear about her encounters with her neighbour, a shop assistant and others in the unidentified town or city where she lives.

Writer Laura Horton's (left) new play Lynn Faces is at the New Diorama Theatre

Laura Horton is a multi-award-winning writer and Plymouth Laureate of Words 2021-23, the first woman and playwright in the role. In 5 Questions With…, she talks about how her new play, Lynn Faces, was inspired by a collision of three different events, what it’s like performing for the first time and Edinburgh stress.

(Watch our conversation here.)

Lynn Faces sees a woman form a punk band after coming out of a toxic relationship. Where did the idea come from?

It's been years in the making. The seeds were planted over 10 years ago. I have a friend called Becky, and I pulled a face at her once, and she said, ‘Oh, that's a Lynn face [Lynn from Alan Patridge]’. So then we would greet each other with the gurn that Lynn does.

Then I came out of a very unpleasant relationship and got very drunk in the pub with my friends, and thought: I need to find some confidence, I want to be in a band.

I've always wanted to be a drummer, so I'm going to start this punk band inspired by Lynn from Alan Partridge. It was an idea that my friend Becky and I came up with.

I booked a gig in a basement bar in Plymouth, sobered up, and realised that absolutely none of us could play. I cancelled it. But I'm a writer, and it just stuck in my head.

Quite a few years ago, I met Viv Albertine from The Slits, and we were having a conversation, and I think she identified that I was in an abusive situation before I did.

And she said, ‘You should read my book’. [Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys]. It felt like the worlds of punk and Lynn were colliding.

Then I saw a wonderful play called Outlier, a beautiful play with music that Malaika Kegode wrote and performed in. And I just thought this [Lynn Faces] is a gig, albeit these people can't play their instruments, unlike Outlier, which is beautifully presented.

It was lots of components coming together.