Review: Young Marx ★★★★ - On your Marx for an exhilarating chase through 19th-century Soho (in 21st-century comfort)

Welcome to 1850 – a genuine welcome to political refugees from Europe, including 32-year-old Karl Marx. But is he in danger of outstaying his welcome as he goes on the razzle through Soho, funding his pub crawls by trying to pawn the family silver? His wife’s family that is, for Jenny von Westphalen is of aristocratic German stock, her relatives scandalised by her marriage to the penniless Jewish revolutionary. As young Marx himself puts it “at our wedding I was only invited to the reception”.

This is one of many knowing one liners from the collaboration of Richard Bean (of One Man, Two Guv’nors fame) with witty barrister/radio writer Clive Coleman. Their young Marx is a full-blooded “solipsistic, self-regarding prick”, in the words of his often exasperated, though always devoted sidekick Engels. They write Marx and Engels as a sort of early music-hall double act and Rory Kinnear and Oliver Chris are perfectly cast.

Kinnear’s Marx, hair and beard wild and out of control as his behaviour, is in the throes of writer’s – and thinker’s – block. He achieves the vital balance between infuriating as the reprobate hiding in cupboards when creditors come calling, and earning sympathy as the adoring father, anxiously tending his sickly son and listening proudly to his daughter’s prowess at the piano (before the broker’s men take it, along with the rest of the family’s furniture and clothes).

Chris’s Engels, equal parts admiration and frustration, convinces as the man whose unwavering self-sacrifice will lead to years of financing Marx’s project (and keeping his family going) by slipping him cash from the till of his father’s Manchester textile factory. In Chris’s performance, he is the vital moral heart of the play too; you can believe that he wrote passionately about the plight of workers observed first hand in those factories.

For all this is fact, Bean and Coleman have mined a rich seam of eyebrow-raising biographical detail and transmuted it into precious theatrical mettle (pun intended!).

They create a vibrant messy Victorian London, peopled by rival factions of émigré activists, German spies – and ‘peelers’.  Our odd couple’s run in with one of Sir Robert Peel’s prototype policemen is an ‘arresting’ example of the writers’ anachronistic, self-referential wit. The drunken pair, caught in possession of a wrought-iron church gate, are surprised and grateful to avoid a beating. “I’ve been on a course” explains the officer.

Big set-pieces – a political meeting, a dawn duel on Hampstead Heath and best of all a deliciously transgressive brawl in the British Museum reading room – contrast nicely with these cameos and with the intimate family scenes cramped into the two tiny rooms where Marx lives with wife, children, and housekeeper Nym. Nancy Carroll is magnificent as passionate, put-upon Jenny and Laura Elphinstone’s quiet hard-working Nym, whose devotion to Marx ultimately gets physical, matches Carroll as Chris matches Kinnear.

Nick Hytner directs a uniformly superlative cast with wit, sensitivity and pace on Mark Thompson’s fold-out set in London greys and browns, lit by Mark Henderson’s atmospheric lighting and topped by Soho rooftops and chimneys, among which Marx climbs to evade the law, which still look much the same today.

It’s a terrific demonstration of the versatility of Hytner and project partner Nick Starr’s brand new Bridge Theatre and augurs well for future productions. Julius Caesar, complete with audience promenaders as the Roman mob, is up next in January. As befits this democratic vibe, seat prices start at £15 and the horse-shoe shaped, spacious auditorium is inclusive, with sightlines looking uniformly good and seats are especially comfortable. The whole is completed in golden leather and wood, and if there is currently a bit of a flow problem because the single doors to the auditorium are too narrow, this could be corrected. The public spaces are spacious, well-lit and welcoming – and ladies, you will be, er, relieved to find so many toilet cubicles with your name on them.

By Judi Herman

Photos by Manuel Harlan

Young Marx runs until Sunday 31 December. 7.45pm (Tue-Sat), 2.30pm (Wed & Sat), 3pm (Sun only). £15-£65. Bridge Theatre, SE1 2SG. https://bridgetheatre.co.uk

Also broadcast live to 700 UK cinemas and many more worldwide on Thursday 7 December. Visit www.ntlive.com for further details.

Review: No Place for a Woman ★★★★ - The imagined story of two women caught in the Holocaust has real power

Extraordinary stories continue to come out of the Holocaust. And writers continue to explore how human nature is pushed to its limits through the extraordinary circumstances of the Shoah.

Writer Cordelia O’Neill sets her play in 1945. Her protagonists, Jew and Nazi, appear to the audience as interviewees of the Allied forces. Isabella is a Jewish ballerina, interned in a concentration camp; like the well-documented real-life examples where musicians were corralled into playing for camp officials, she is ordered to dance at a party thrown by Annie, wife of the camp commandant, Fredrick.  Their lives become not only intertwined, but actually interchanged (almost like Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper, in which the future Edward VI, Henry VIII’s little son, swaps lives with a street urchin), so that they actually change places, as Annie sees Fredrick attracted to Isabella, who begins to see Fredrick – himself disillusioned with the war – as a man she could love.

O'Neill has imagined a nightmarishly Kafkaesque situation, which she handles with an extraordinary subtlety and delicacy, making it all the more unsettling. For the two women speak not just for themselves but for Fredrick and interchange their personalities on a seesaw of power and influence over each other and over Fredrick, as they try to understand, influence and change their own plight – their own reality and indeed their own pasts. There are vivid memories of Isabella’s childhood, family and life as a dancer; of Annie’s meeting with Fredrick, how dependent she is on his love, her increasing isolation, even from her children, in the role imposed on her as an officer’s wife.

I guess you could call this a 'woman's story' and director Kate Budgen gets beautifully nuanced performances from Emma Paetz as Isabella and Ruth Gemmell as Annie. Paetz shows all the contrasting delicacy and steely resolve and discipline, even ruthlessness, necessary to become a leading ballerina – and to survive, even flourish in a concentration camp. Gemmell makes the repressed, damaged Annie sympathetic. Extraordinarily hers is the cup that is half empty, Isabella’s half full, as they recall intimate moments with Fredrick, the mistress remembering tenderness, affection; the wife anger and impatience.

Composer/musician Elliott Rennie’s plangent live cello music underscores the whole and helps the constantly shifting balance on Camilla Clarke’s eerie set – truly a black box intersected with a jagged light (courtesy of Sarah Radman). He and his cello make an extra physical presence, at once dividing and uniting the women. And Movement Director Lucy Cullingford works equally subtly with the pair, somehow making their movements seamless and complementary, just as their words are, without them actually connecting physically. O’Neill consulted survivors and it shows, for her imagined story has real authenticity and dramatic power.

By Judi Herman

Photos by Jack Sain

Click here to listen to Judi Herman's interview with Cordelia O'Neill on JR OutLoud.

No Place for a Woman runs until Saturday 27 May. 7.45pm (Tue-Sat), 3pm (Wed & Sat only). £15, £12 concs. Theatre 503, SW11 3BW. 020 7978 7040. www.theatre503.com

Click here to read more theatre reviews.

Review: All Our Children ★★★★ - Director turned writer Stephen Unwin vividly brings a lesser-known Nazi atrocity to our attention

The horrors of the mass killing of disabled children perpetrated by the Nazis are less well-known than the Holocaust, though they were arguably a rehearsal for the final solution. All Our Children, a moving drama from director turned writer Stephen Unwin, tells their story by focusing on one so-called clinic and the awakening conscience of Victor, the ageing doctor who runs it. Unwin dedicates his drama to his son Joey, who has profound learning difficulties, so this first play from the acclaimed theatre director is an intensely personal story.

Colin Tierney captures every nuance of Victor's struggle in a finely-calibrated performance, neatly contrasted with the cool certainty of his co-administrator Eric, a ruthless young Nazi ideologue, played with terrifying authenticity by Edward Franklin. Eric has no problem with the argument that these 'imbeciles' are a waste of money and precious resources.

The only woman in Victor's life is his gentle solicitous housekeeper Martha (luminous Rebecca Johnson). Indeed there is a suggestion that the bachelor might be gay, which we know could mean he'll share the fate of his charges. Meanwhile Martha has a hinterland that brings the outside world into the clinic, a husband at the front, a bright five-year-old son and a nubile 17-year-old daughter attracting unwelcome attention from Eric.

The doctor receives two visitors, catalysts for a change of heart, Frau Pabst, devoted mother of one of his 'patients' and Bishop Von Galen, a real-life champion of the helpless victims of Hitler's Euthanasia Decree.

Lucy Speed plays Frau Pabst, with heartbreaking and increasingly strident desperation, convinced Victor is hiding the fate of her son, but his evasive answers are more an indication of his inability to explain why he cannot help her and his fears for his own predicament than of callousness.

So it is left to Bishop Galen to make a difference, to add his righteous anger to her furious distress, and so fully awaken Victor's conscience. David Yelland plays Galen with blazing authority – the words righteous indignation are overused, but this is surely what they mean.

Mindful of the fate of so many committed Christians under Hitler and in the light of Eric's contemptuous denouncement of the Bishop, you fear for him. Unwin does not reveal his fate – suffice to say he was beatified by Pope Benedict XIV.

One of the most moving moments, a beautiful heartfelt declaration of real love and affection for her charges from Martha which serves to finally determine Victor's way forward, has all the authenticity of the playwright's experience of the love and joy of living with these children. That he can also write witty, albeit dark lines, evoking audience laughter, only makes the situation more real and immediate. A fine writing debut for this seasoned director.

By Judi Herman

Photos by Camilla Greenwell

All Our Children runs until Saturday 3 June. 7.30pm (Mon-Sat), 3.30pm (Sat only; plus 18 & 25 May). £22-£30. Jermyn Street Theatre, SW1Y 6ST. 020 7287 2875. www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk

Click here to read more theatre reviews.

Review: A Dark Night in Dalston ★★★ - A night of discovery at Park Theatre that will keep you guessing

Some years back, I interviewed Rabbi Jonathan Black for radio, making a cameo appearance in EastEnders conducting a Jewish wedding. Not already a viewer, I duly researched by watching an omnibus edition and learned how you ‘gotta talk’. Jewish (non-Orthodox) playwright Stewart Permutt did his research by consulting a Charedi friend. So there’s a real authenticity about his protagonist Gideon – what brands of bread and crisps he can eat (Kingsmill and Walkers) and what he cannot drink from (glass).

Permutt has form when writing strong female characters, often for well-known TV stars, including Lesley Joseph, Celia Imrie and the much-missed Miriam Karlin.

His latest play was specially commissioned by EastEnders and Coronation Street star Michelle Collins, who was born in Hackney. Collins' maternal grandfather was a Belgian Jew who moved to Wales to escape the Holocaust. Having played the confused mother Evelyn in Diane Samuels' Kindertransport, Collins sought another dramatic stage role and proactively commissioned a play with a juicy part for herself.

The resulting two-hander is a present-day drama set in the East End flat of Collins’ character Gina, a feisty, friendly ex-nurse living on a Dalston council estate, whose days are filled caring for her partner, who's been bed-bound after a stroke. When young Orthodox Jew Gideon (Joe Coen) is beaten up one Friday night on her doorstep, Gina takes him in. But Shabbat has begun and this strictly observant Jew can’t travel home to Stanmore, so is forced to spend the night with her, a night during which they find themselves drawn to each other as regrets about their lives emerge.

Tim Stark directs this dark comedy exploring the “madness of the human condition”, as he says, with a sensitive ear for dialogue so that the evolving emotional conflict is genuinely involving. Simon Shaw’s set beautifully evokes (now ex) council flats, with their signature external landings. However, it’s a challenge to sustain dramatic tension over a scenario that doesn’t evolve sufficiently during its playing time, so it might benefit from losing a few of its 105 minutes.

Collins and Coen admirably inhabit their characters despite gaps in their development over the drama’s duration. Collins convincingly captures the conflicted Gina, and her small-screen acting is well suited to the intimate Park90 space. Coen, fresh from The Mighty Walzer and Bad Jews, invests Gideon with that curious mix of self-righteousness and self-knowing often seen in the ultra-orthodox of any religion. Their final scenes together are touching, bringing out the common bonds shared by the characters and the chemistry between the actors.

A Dark Night in Dalston is a good night out, given enough good will and patience to discover Gina and Gideon’s deep-seated hopes and needs.

By Judi Herman

Photos by Helen Murray

A Dark Night in Dalston runs until Saturday 1 April. 7.45pm (Mon-Sat), 3.15pm (Thu & Sat only). £18, £16.50 concs. Park Theatre, N4 3JP. 020 7870 6876. www.parktheatre.co.uk

Click here to read more theatre reviews.

Review: Once in a Lifetime ★★★ - Sophisticated fun set in Hollywood at the birth of the talkies

When witty Jewish writing duo George Kaufman and Moss Hart wrote this back-of-the-movie-lot comedy, set at the birth of the talkies, neither had been to Hollywood, but they knew enough about the goings-on in the movie business to know it would suit their satirical wise-cracking style. Kaufman co-wrote The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers for the Marx Brothers and this witty habitué of the Algonquin Round Table never lost his sense of sarcasm. He said about one play: "I saw it under adverse conditions; the curtain was up!" The plotlines in their collaborations were primarily Hart’s while Kaufman focused on the witty, sarcastic dialogue.

It's 1928 and The Jazz Singer, the first all-talking picture, is a sensation.  Three struggling vaudevillians, sardonic May Daniels, smooth-operator Jerry Hyland and their stooge George Lewis, the "best deadpan feeder in the business", head west to present themselves as elocution experts, hoping to teach movie stars to speak on screen. With help from gossip columnist Helen Hobart, they’re hired by megalomaniac film mogul Herman Glogauer (Harry Enfield making his theatrical debut), who is trying to come to terms with talking pictures. "Things were going along fine. You couldn't stop making money – even if you made a good picture, you made money."

The three encounter a proverbial dumb blonde wannabe actress and her pushy mum, a playwright driven to distraction and then a sanatorium by studio bureaucracy, a silent-screen beauty with a screeching voice, and Glogauer’s faithful put-upon receptionist.

Glogauer hails dimwit George as a visionary genius, when he is the only one to tell him to his face that he turned down the VitaPhone sound film system. Glogauer makes him head of production and it all goes wrong – or right? – from there…

Director Richard Jones
 and designer Hyemi Shin set the action on a clever revolve, with lightning-fast set changes rolling through train carriages, offices and studios. The plot gains momentum as the action hots up. Claudie Blakely’s lightly acerbic May sparks off Kevin Bishop’s laid-back Jerry and John Marquez’s increasingly confident and funny George. Lucy Cohu’s wondrously-clad grande-dame columnist exudes authority, Amy Griffiths’ silent-screen star is literally a scream and Lizzy Connolly is deliciously dumb and dumber in a succession of wigs and gowns (all hail costume designer Nicky Gillibrand). And Amanda Lawrence’s receptionist steals scenes without pulling focus – her physicality, the mobility of her face, her comic delivery – she is simply riveting.

Harry Enfield’s Glogauer is curiously understated, though he delivers wonderful lines such as "That's the way we do things here – no time wasted on thinking" with (dare I say it) Trump-like panache.

And more please of that joyous sense of insanity and frenzy demanded by the plot, the lines and the built-in wise-cracking from a Marx Brothers scriptwriter. Richard Jones successfully populates the studio lot with a substantially smaller cast than in the original show. As his production gains pace, it will zip along in the gleeful and effervescent way the silly ploy and vivacious dialogue demand. It’s already a fun evening in the theatre with lots of laughs to be had in the run up to Christmas and a happy New Year.

By Judi Herman

Photos by Johan Persson

Once in a Lifetime runs until Saturday 14 January, 7.30pm (Mon-Sat) & 2.30pm (Wed & Sat only), note there are no performances 24 & 31 Dec, £10-£35, at Young Vic Theatre, SE1 8LZ; 020 7922 2922. www.youngvic.org

Review: All My Sons ★★★★ - Miller packs an emotional punch in Michael Rudman’s finely calibrated production

How strangely Miller’s first great hit resonates with today, in ways no one could have predicted. This beautifully measured play opens with shots of laidback family life in a typical American small town where everyone knows one another. Comfortably-off factory owner Joe Keller’s backyard is a focal point, where he and the neighbouring doctor are reading the papers. “What’s today’s calamity?” jokes David Horovitch’s amiable Joe. Cue gales of ironic audience laughter, with the US election so raw.

For a play that unfolds like a Greek tragedy, it’s surprising how much laughter is built into these opening scenes. But that’s the point: drama, and especially tragedy, is an interruption of routine.

Director Michael Rudman worked extensively with Miller himself, notably directing an award-winning production of Death of a Salesman starring Dustin Hoffman. So Rudman brings a huge depth of insider knowledge, as well as a sure directorial instinct for the pace of the story and the complex relationships between its protagonists. There’s a terrific cast here too and designer Michael Taylor’s unusually realistic set – cosy front porch leading onto a verdant garden – works especially well too  for a story that is all too authentic.

Keller is the father at the heart of Miller’s story, set in 1946. His younger son Larry is MIA in World War II and faulty aircraft parts manufactured in his factory caused the loss of other fathers’ sons. His deputy Steve Deever, who took the rap, remains in prison and although it’s known in the community that Joe is equally guilty, the Kellers’ lives seem unaffected on the surface. His wife Kate refuses to accept Larry is dead and his surviving son Chris wants to marry Larry’s girl Ann – daughter of Steve. And the Deevers used to live next door in what is now the doctor’s house, so those relationships are complex and uneasy indeed.

Horovitch’s Joe is all bluff heartiness, demanding to be liked and in pole position in both family and community, his guilt buried deep until events unravel. Penny Downie’s Kate is brittle in her bonhomie, steely in hope, her grief and guilt making her seem vulnerable, drifting almost wraith-like in long housecoats. Their relationship is clearly still physical. Like Claudius and Gertrude, they enjoy the fruits of a calamitous deceit and like the heroes of Greek tragedy they must be undone.

You can see why Francesca Zoutewelle’s enchanting Ann has fallen for Alex Waldmann’s intelligent Chris from the moment she skips into the yard like a breath of fresh air. He has a sense of humour and a conscience – a combination that would bode well for them as soulmates in any other circumstance. But Edward Harrison’s dark, angry George is an all too credible avenging fury.

Rudman told his cast: “Don’t sell the play to the audience. Make them come to you”. It’s a tactic that works wonderfully as the story reaches its tragic climax over the course of a day. Not simply a Greek tragedy, or an all-American one, but a human tragedy from one of America’s greatest Jewish playwrights given a production of which he would surely have approved.

by Judi Herman

Photos by Mark Douet

All My Sons runs until Saturday 19 November, 7.30pm matinees Thursday and Saturday 2.30pm, £8-£35, at Rose Theatre Kingston, 24 – 26 High St, KT1 1HL; 020 8174 0090. www.rosetheatrekingston.org

Two consecutive evenings, two talented young Israeli performing artists, both with so much to offer

knock-and-falling

I rounded off October by spending two consecutive evenings being excited and challenged by the work of two talented young Israeli performing artists, both with so much to offer. Niv Petel is heartbreaking in Knock Knock, his beautifully nuanced account of a devastating situation faced by too many Israeli families, and Hagit Yakira attracted full houses for her exciting new work Free Falling.

Petel is an extraordinary physical actor, wonderfully convincing as a devoted mother whose son is the centre of her life. An engaging and important contribution to our understanding of life in Israel. And at Sadler’s Wells last week, dancer/choreographer Yakira presented four talented performers falling and recovering again as they take what life throws at them. Supporting each other, their eyes and faces as important as the rest of their bodies as they look out for each other. In a beguiling add on, three more dance artists responded to Free Falling – including full audience participation on the studio floor, everyone linked in a joyful dance – a sort of Hora at Sadler’s Wells, which makes Israeli dance so welcome. Niv Petel and Hagit Yakira are certainly names to watch.

Continue through the blog to read our reviews of Knock Knock and Free Falling, as well as an interview with Niv Petel, or click the names to go straight to each one.

by Judi Herman

Review: Knock Knock ★★★★ - A beautifully nuanced account of a devastating situation

Clad simply in a white top and khaki trousers, to which he adds such details as a white apron, Petel bowls a blinder by playing the mother of his young conscript. He stacks the emotional stakes high – she's a single mother and an army therapist, trained to tell bereaved parents the worst, to make that dreaded knock on the door, and to work with them through the grief and loss that will form part of the rest of their lives. For most of the show Petel talks intimately and affectionately to his son. The account of their intense relationship is beautifully paced, starting with Ilad as a babe in arms and then as a toddler; at kindergarten, then junior school; as stroppy teenager and, inevitably, at 18 preparing for the draft.

Petel’s is a beautifully nuanced physical performance that takes the audience with him through the whole of what we know is to be a tragically short life. There's a moment of hope when we discover that as an only child, he can opt out of active service; we live with his mother through the nail-biting agony of trying to dissuade her son from choosing service to prove himself. But mothers must let go if children are to grow up at all.

With the aid of designer Rhiannon White the show is made up of an extraordinarily simple set and minimal, versatile props to set off the physical and vocal skill and simplicity with which Petel tells his story. White lives up to her name, for everything on stage is stark and clinical: a table, chair, telephone and the towel that Petel winds first into baby Ilad and then almost everything else needed to tell his tale. Under lighting designer Oliver Bush’s equally stark white light, the feel is of a waiting room, a surgery or a morgue – perhaps a waiting room in the afterlife even. The only other colour is the khaki of those trousers, suggesting that Petel is Ilad, as well as his mother, which is a touching duality. Overall, Knock Knock is an engaging and important contribution to our understanding of life in Israel.

By Judi Herman

Knock Knock runs until Sunday 6 November, 7.30pm, £8-£10, at Etcetera Theatre, 265 Camden High St, NW1 7BU; 020 7482 4857. http://etceteratheatre.com

Listen to Niv Petel talking about Knock Knock on JR OutLoud

JR OutLoud: Israeli actor Niv Petel tells us about Knock Knock, his beautifully nuanced one-man show

Writer/performer Niv Petel's one-man show Knock Knock is an explicit, heartbreaking account of the agony faced by bereaved parents of young Israeli soldiers killed during compulsory army service. The dreaded 'knock knock' at the door means a trained army therapist has come to tell you the worst. Petel spoke to JR's arts editor Judi Herman on the stage of the Etcetera Theatre immediately after the show.

Photo by Chris Gardner

Knock Knock runs until Sunday 6 November, 7.30pm & 6.30pm, £8-£10, at Etcetera Theatre, 265 Camden High St, NW1 7BU; 020 7482 4857. www.etceteratheatre.com

Review: Lunch and The Bow of Ulysses ★★★ – Steven Berkoff coupling on fine form

I’ll always be grateful to Steven Berkoff. Back in my days as drama lecturer, blown away by his 1983 play West, his second foray into life on London’s gangland manors, I wrote to him via his agent to ask if I might borrow the unpublished script. The hard copy arrived almost as fast as an email might now, by return with a friendly invitation to keep it. My students adored playing the scabrously ornate muscular verse and the body language it demanded.

Lunch dates from 1983, too and although it is prose, the language is often as extravagant – and as bracingly sexual. A man and a woman share a seaside bench at lunchtime. He confides lustful thoughts that she arouses, which make Trump’s ill-judged bragging look prim, and it’s in-yer-face in this intimate space, too. He is yearning, rather than boasting, with every muscle and fibre in Shaun Dooley’s extraordinary performance. Emily Bruni’s woman is equally physical – at first sight primly upright and uptight, but actually coiled like a spring ready to snap – or catch him in those coils...

Thanks also to Nigel Harman’s direction and movement director Alistair David, what follows is a masterclass in physicalising Berkoff’s language that would have enthralled my students. They prowl around each other like courting cats, he wiping from his brow real drops of sweat with a real hanky. At this proximity, audience members might also sweat uncomfortably as the couple eventually end up adjusting their dress at our feet.

But it’s their relish of the language that carries you along, the taste of it on the tongue – even when his chat-up line is trying to interest her in the space he sells for a living “electro-type on quarto double weight” (yes, space on paper, not online, Lunch is of its time) he enunciates alluringly in his attempt to melt “an ice lolly in a whirlwind.” “You’re not looking for me, you’re looking for it, you canine groper,” is her riposte (this comes more like a chat-up line before that apparent tumble behind the beach shelter).

That’s just a taste of what’s to come in the Bow of Ulysses, set (and indeed written) 20 years later and as many years into a marriage on the rocks. Rather than trading bracing insults, though, the estranged couple express themselves in longer, bitter monologues, downbeat this time. It was good to see these short companion pieces together, though strangely the first, as a real period piece, seemed less dated than its sequel. Ben and Max Ringham provide an evocative seaside soundscape and designer Lee Newby has a great eye for shades of brown that match at least the dress of this ill-matched pair in a seaside shelter that’s the only restful element in an unsettling evening.

By Judi Herman

Photos by Marc Brenner

Lunch and The Bow of Ulysses  runs until Saturday  5 November, Monday to Saturday 7.45pm Thursday and Saturday 3pm, £19.50-£35, at Trafalgar Studios 2, 14 Whitehall, SW1A 2DY; 0844 871 7632. www.atgtickets.com