Remembrance Day If the prospect of a play about Latvia overwhelms you with gloom, think again. This one has a sombre wit, and Michael Longhurst’s production is anything but a chore. The playwright Aleksey Scherbak trains his sights on the annual march through Riga to commemorate the soldiers who fought against the Red Army as part of the Waffen-SS. Anya (Ruby Bentall), a newly politicised ethnic Russian teenager, is determined to take part in an anti-fascist demo on Latvian Legion Day. Her more passive father believes it’s time “to end this uproar over these old men”. When he says so in a television interview, he is branded a Nazi sympathiser. Scherbak's characters include codgerly, vodka-gulping veterans bickering over the war, and he makes subtle judgments between extremes of praise and blame. His sourest contempt is for the cynical game-playing of political parties. MS
Rocket to the Moon Rocket to the Moon Dentistry and creative liberation make odd partners in Clifford Odets’s bittersweet play, which is steeped in the atmosphere and idiom of struggling New Yorkers during a sweltering summer in 1938. Few patients visit Ben Stark’s practice (Anthony Ward’s set is rather too grand, despite the nicotine-stained ceiling), so there’s plenty of time to pursue two overlapping love triangles as the play’s focus disconcertingly shifts from one to the other. Ben, a 40-year-old dentist, has settled for failure, marked by the mirthless grin on his face, and is dominated by his wife, Belle (Keeley Hawes). Then, like an Ibsen heroine, Cleo (Jessica Raine) arrives to work as his assistant. She’s young, naive and an idealistic dreamer. Sadly, Raine’s Cleo has a voice like a dentist’s drill. Is the soft-hearted Ben (the excellent Joseph Millson) capable of sending a rocket to the moon and going off with Cleo? Or will she settle for wealth in the shape of Ben’s father-in-law, the sharklike Prince, exuberantly played by Nicholas Woodeson? Angus Jackson’s production is timely in its depiction of economic gloom, but ultimately fails to soar. JE
Re-charged Re-charged If Ken Clarke really wants to reduce the number of people in prison, he would do well to start with those women with mental-health problems who end up behind bars. It’s a theme that preoccupies Chloe Moss’s Fatal Light, part of a trilogy of plays presented by Clean Break, a company that has been examining the relationship between women and the criminal justice system since 1979. Sam Holcroft’s Dancing Bears shuffles the sexes in her gruelling study of peer pressure within a gang. Finally, Rebecca Lenkiewicz bravely tackles Clean Break’s modus operandi, in which the playwrights go into prisons and meet with women offenders. The writer, for all her good intentions, finds it hard to relate to two lifers. Not always easy watching, these plays show us a world that most of us would prefer to ignore. JE
the Kissing-Dance The Kissing-Dance Only a dolt or jack pudding would carp at this charming musical by Howard Goodall and Charles Hart. It’s based on Goldsmith’s comedy She Stoops to Conquer. Charles Marlow comes a-wooing in the country, but he has flirting issues; tongue-tied with the gentility, he warms up considerably with a serving wench. He’s “half billy goat, half mouse”, she sighs. Steeped in English pastoral, artful ensembles build on Hart’s spry internal rhymes, while Goodall’s wistful streams of melody meander through trepidation and regret. It’s a modest, undercooked production featuring actor-musicians, with the acting honours stolen by Gina Beck’s silvery heroine and Beverly Klein as her bossy mama, a melodramatic hamster in harem pants. DJ
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Comedy of Errors The Comedy of Errors Andrew Hilton’s production is a revelation. This early play is more than a comedy. Voltaire announced that Shakespeare was a barbarian because his tragedies had comic scenes; the great Gallic sage would have been appalled to see a shadow of fear hung over this improbable story. Will poor old Egeon (David Collins) be executed? Can you laugh at Adriana (Dorothea Myer-Bennett) when her husband publicly humiliates her? Or at him (Matthew Thomas) when she humiliates him? The young Shakespeare already knew that life was a two-way game: laughter in the dark, love your neighbour, but don’t trust anyone — not our contemporary, but speaking like one. The two Dromios are comic-heroic victims, looking as eerily alike as their tormented masters. Unmissable. JP