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?

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.

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.

The National Theatre has given its new production of Coriolanus an epic feel. The stage has a series of huge concrete-looking columns which rise and fall to create different spaces in and around which the action is set.

Ancient artefacts are dotted around, sometimes giving the feel of a modern museum, which is a visual representation of how the production blends old and new. It has one foot in the past and another in the present.

Coriolanus (David Oyelowo), the soldier extraordinaire who has delivered so many victories for Rome, is admired and revered by the elite and common people alike until he does something which is seen as disrespectful. 

He 'disses' his fans, if you like, and they turn on him, egged on by the tribunes Sicinius (Stephanie Street) and Brutus (Jordan Metcalfe).

Their punishment is to banish him. But it is something they quickly regret when their former hero sets out on a path of revenge.

The costumes have a quasi-modern look, but there are no other modern references. And yet, Coriolanus' treatment, how he is raised up and objectified by his 'fans' only to be brought down by the same, has resonance with social and tabloid media now. He gets 'cancelled'.

When someone plays not just many characters but all the characters in a classic play as Eddie Izzard does here for Hamlet, I have two key questions: How will they do it and why, i.e. what will it add?

When I saw Andrew Scott's one-man Vanya, while a technically brilliant performance, it didn't add to or elevate the play. I missed seeing him riff off other actors.

The jury was still out at the interval of Eddie Izzard's Hamlet. I simply wasn't sure what to make of it, but for different reasons to Vanya. It didn't feel like it was missing other actors, perhaps because I'm used to Eddie Izzard being a solo performer.

Here, the problem was how inextricably linked Eddie Izzard's persona is with her stand-up, at least in my mind. She has a distinct comic style and tone, which is evident in the 23 different characters she plays.

Was she being tongue-in-cheek? I could see her doing little bits of Hamlet in her stand-up show, but this is the whole play, which, while there is some humour to be found, is a tragedy.

But while I grappled with the question of comedy, some scenes worked really well with some interesting decisions.

She plays the characters mostly by taking a step into a different position. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are the exceptions; here, she talks with his hands, which is very silly, but it works for the characters who are puppets of Hamlet's uncle Claudius.

Director Jamie Lloyd is behind this new production of Romeo & Juliet with Spider-Man Tom Holland as the star name. He's a director whose work I love, particularly for the way he takes familiar plays and makes you see them differently.

Could he work his magic on this Shakespeare classic and make me like a play I've started to avoid?

I've seen a good handful of productions of Romeo & Juliet, and my main problem has been believability. There has rarely been sufficient chemistry between the star-crossed lovers to make their teenage 3-day meet-fall-in-love-marry-die story feel genuine.

It doesn't help that the 3-day tragi-romance begins with Romeo moping because he's so in love with another girl. (Fickle youth.)

But watching Jamie Lloyd's production, it's like he's asked a mate to hold his pint while he throws an emotional punch.

The staging is stripped back and still. There are a couple of mic stands and a step-down near the front of the stage where the actors sometimes sit.

Jamie Lloyd has embellished this sparse, prop-free backdrop by mixing in live video. A camera projects particular scenes on a huge screen above their heads, creating a cinema-screen-sized close-up.

The handheld camera also allows the actors to roam and break away from the traditional performance space. (At one point, Tom Holland's Romeo goes up onto the roof for a quiet cig.)

Love's Labour's Lost, starring Luke Thomson, is the play that got me back to Stratford. It's been years since I jumped on a train to the West Midlands as it's become more of a faff since direct trains from London were ditched (such an idiotic decision).

Was it worth the journey?

Director Emily Burns has brought a contemporary freshness to Love's Labour's Lost. It's set in a luxury, exotic resort where Ferdinand, King of Navarre (Abiola Owokoniran), Berowne (Luke Thomson) and two other friends have signed an oath to study, fast and stay away from women for three years.

Even the Princess of France (Melanie-Joyce Bermudez) and her three ladies are not permitted beyond the grounds where the King insists they meet. However, this permitted 'off-site' doesn't stop Ferdinand falling in love with the Princess, Berowne falling for Rosaline (Ionna Kimbook) and Longville and Dumaine falling for the other two ladies.

Secret wooing, disguises and mistakes with letters ensue.

The contemporary resort setting works well with servants and courtiers becoming spa staff. There are sun loungers, golf tees and a tennis coach. Stripping away the court puts the focus on the men's behaviour. It also fits with the sassy way the women out-wit them and put them in their place.

Player Kings at the Noel Coward Theatre is Henry IV parts 1 & 2 squished together to create just under four hours of Shakespeare with one interval.

Ian McKellen is the big star name, playing Falstaff with Richard Coyle as Henry IV and Toheeb Jimoh as Hal.

Prince Hal's behaviour is presented as influenced by his spending so much time hanging out in taverns and with thieves, and I really liked that.

It is particularly notable in the way he fights. There is one moment when his actions towards Hotspur, whom his father admires, are certainly dirty and dishonourable. It puts both characters in a different light.

Richard Coyle, as Henry IV, has such a commanding stage presence that you could hear a pin drop every time he appeared. He presents a formidable and slightly scary King.

Robert Icke, who has adapted and directed the play, leaves little room for guilt about the means by which Henry came by the crown.

Although the fact that Henry was able to leap out of bed and wrestle with his son when he was supposedly dying did feel a little comical.

Ian McKellen is going to be my favourite Falstaff. This production felt like it was a vehicle for him to do a series of comic turns.

Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma's Macbeth is being staged in an industrial warehouse in Canada Water, south east London, which means there is space around the auditorium to start setting the scene.

As you step in from the dockside entrance, there are banners emblazoned with an 'M' and the sound of jet aircraft flying overhead. A military base-style siren goes off to let you know that the house is open.

Getting to your seat involves a walk through a battle-scarred street scene, and once inside, there are military personnel. The ominous post-battle sounds continue. It's a charged atmosphere.

The raked seating is on three sides of the stage, so even sitting almost at the back, it didn't feel too far away from the stage. The aisles are used during the performance for some even closer encounters.

A bomb-damaged concrete slab and a series of steps form the performance space. At the back are electronic sliding doors with frosted glass, which obscures all unless objects - or people - are very close.

David Tennant playing Macbeth was always going to be a hot ticket. (David Tennant playing any character on stage will be a hot ticket.)

Why then stage it at the Donmar Warehouse, which has such a small capacity? Is it because of the headphones?

You see, this production isn't your standard 'actors on stage speaking'. The actors are mic'd up - nothing unusual about that - but the audience hears everything through headphones, including the soundscape and 'other' voices.

That is much easier to set up and deliver in a small theatre, given that everyone has to have working headphones to experience the play.

What it does is put the voices of the actors in your ear. You can hear the shouts and, more importantly, the whispers. It means the actors have a different performance platform.

There is no need for projected 'stage whispers' because you have the natural effect of the actors whispering in your ear. Performances can be smaller while maintaining the intensity.

It also gives the Donmar three performance spaces. There is the raised white, 'stone' like slab, which acts as both stage and table and a glass-walled booth at the back of the stage (Ivo Van Hove/Jan Versweyveld-esque?).

And then there are the disembodied voices you hear in your ear. It transports the witches and their prophecies into Macbeth's (David Tennant) head.

However, hearing the play through headphones, while it delivers an enhanced and unique experience in many ways, is not a wholly satisfying experience, but more of that later.