If Strindberg had been a Jacobean, this is the sort of play he’d have written. Its ingredients are social resentment, lust spiced up by revulsion, love that never has a chance, black, gruesome humour and insanity. The Jacobeans were fascinated by madness. The word “changeling” meant idiot; also a fickle person, unpredictable, a waverer. Take that to an extreme and you get insanity. This is why the play’s subplot is set in an asylum: it’s both a parody of the main plot and a grotesque variation on it. Declan Donnellan’s modern-dress Cheek by Jowl production is set under and behind the Barbican stage, with precipitously steep seating: a bare, dark, cavernous space, ideal for nightmares. Donnellan reveals the play’s power by ignoring its baroque flamboyance.

The action is swift and fatal, like the characters. Olivia Williams’s Beatrice-Joanna is an imperious, fastidious virgin, a changeling of femininity who dabbles in lust and murder. De Flores is usually played as a brooding, ugly hunk exuding sexuality. Will Keen makes him another changeling, tight-lipped and tight-suited. The fierce sexual desire of a nervous, needy man is really shocking: both pitiable and ugly. This is a star performance. The place should be packed. Four stars

Shrieks of Laughter
Soho

Moses Raine’s 50-minute first play is almost indecently bursting with talent. An adolescent boy, Henry (Tom Payne), is seeing a therapist, who hypnotises him. What follows is a series of flashbacks to the family life that sent him there: a wealthy ex-army father, coarse and obsessively macho (Sam Cox); an elder brother (Oliver Coleman) who is trying hard to be the same; and a genteel, fretful mother (Imogen Stubbs), who tries to be sensible and maternal. Or, on the other hand, all this could be what goes through Henry’s hypnotised mind. It’s not that Raine doesn’t make things clear: his play is a series of internal images, dreams within dreams. He and Henry are both looking for reasons, solutions — or an escape. At one point, they are all on the family yacht, with dad laying down the law on everything from success and cricket to masturbation, when the radio comes to life: a Mayday call from another boat. Only Henry takes any notice. There is a life elsewhere, Raine suggests, but only if help comes in time. The actors, and Maria Aberg’s direction, are tough and flawless. Three stars

Jane Eyre
Trafalgar Studios

Seven years on, Polly Teale’s adaptation has lost none of its power. It reveals the originality of Charlotte Brontë’s novel. Jane has an inner self that is both part of her and alien to her: she needs it and she fears it. Her moments of emotional crisis are represented by the mad Mrs Rochester in the attic: Jane seems, subconsciously, to be responding to her. She’s her unknown driving force and her shadow. Jungians, please note. Another thing: Dickens’s characters present themselves fully made up, but Teale reveals Jane in the process of thinking. It’s rather like the difference between Marlowe and Shakespeare. Monica Dolan’s performance has a shocking and moving virtuosity: deeply and fearlessly emotional, and streaked with harsh humour. If ever an adaptation could make you read or reread the original, this is it. Four stars

Julius Caesar
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

There is a tide in the affairs of men, as the fellow says, but I doubt if Sean Holmes even saw it coming. This is a big, noisy, dreary production. In this great political drama you get no sense of a clash of ideas, only of voices. Holmes has a strong cast, but he’s got precious little out of them. The characters of Brutus and Cassius (John Light, Finbar Lynch) are not explored, which means that their differences as politicians — the engine that drives the play — remain in darkness.

The staging of Caesar’s funeral speeches is completely undramatic: two men shout hoarsely at the stalls, answered by off-stage roars. Antony (Ariyon Bakare) lacks all charisma, and nobody explained to him how to use his voice, or what rhetoric is about. Portia (Mariah Gale) slaps Brutus across the face: hardly a practice among the Roman nobility. Caesar (James Hayes) is imperious, but in a schoolmasterly way; after his murder, he gets up, looking distinctly put out, and trundles off as if looking for an Exit sign. In my heart of hearts, I felt like looking for it too. Two stars