The Dumb Waiter
Trafalgar Studios, Four stars

This is a welcome revival of the Pinter classic on its 50th anniversary, with Jason Isaacs as Ben and Lee Evans as Gus: two nervy hit men in a claustral basement, awaiting their orders. Peter McKintosh’s set, with its cracked and filthy wall tiles and uneven concrete floor, suggests a gents’ lavatory that has really let itself go. Add to that two harsh strip lights, with a lot more stark white light pouring onto the stage from above, and this is a bleak, bleak world. (Well, it is set in Birmingham.) And, of course, this being Pinter, the anxious laughs start coming as Ben and Gus get into their roles, a kind of “nice psychopath/nasty psychopath” double act, the conversation all fruitless loops and repetitions, and gradual, horrifying intimations, while the sense of imminent violence never lets up for a moment. Isaacs, as the senior operative, Ben, with his neat little beard and steel glasses, looks like a particularly spruce and sadistic English teacher. He should convey undercurrents of real bubbling fury, though, rather than mere nervous irritability. Evans is an excellent, shambolic, dim-witted Gus, his body language as funny as ever, standing gormlessly with his feet splayed at 90 degrees, struggling to understand. Just occasionally, he is too manic, girning excessively or jumping too quickly onto the end of Isaacs’s lines. But this is generally a deft and convincing production, alarmingly funny, especially with all that talk of a dodgy ball cock. Talk about toilet humour. . . CH

As You Like It
Crucible, Sheffield, Three stars

Samuel West’s production starts off cool. I don’t mean cold, smug or detached. Katrina Lindsay’s all-white set, with brilliantly jokey props and costumes, is in the modernist line, reminding you that this is life, but in a theatre. (Most people know that, but let that pass.) Still, modernist needn’t mean cool. Also, this play, along with Twelfth Night and the Dream, is one of Shakespeare’s most Mozartian works, warm, funny and tolerant, deeply felt but ironical. It’s that kind of warmth that’s missing at first. Eve Best’s Rosalind is slightly mannish, a young, sophisticated, unmarried aunt rather than an eager girl. In the Forest of Arden, things change. An enchanting madness takes over. Like many other Rosalinds, once Best is in trousers, she releases a beguiling sexuality; and she reveals a sparkling talent for comedy, wistful and provocative, that I haven’t seen from her before. Jacques (Daniel Weyman) is played not as the self-admiring misanthrope of the text, but as a jovial chat-show host; I can’t think why. Some of the verse-speaking is shaky: pray you, amend it. Sam Troughton is a strong Orlando, moving subtly from immaturity to confidence. The ending is spectacular, and Best’s epilogue, sexy and funny, brings the house down. JP

The War Next Door
Tricycle, Kilburn, Four stars

Tamsin Oglesby’s play is a magical-satirical portrait of liberal middle-class England, but it delivers an unexpected explosion, like a bomb in a designer bag. Max (David Michaels), a barrister, and his black wife, Sophie (Lorraine Burroughs), an eco-junkie, live next door to Ali (Jonathan Coyne), a truculent Turk. Ali objects to Sophie’s habit of pottering about nude in the garden; Max pacifies him by introducing him to cannabis, which he grows for himself. However, Max and Sophie gradually realise that Ali beats his wife, and they feel a rising moral urge to intervene. Middle-class rectitude struggles with English prurience and righteousness: you can guess the result. Halfway through, you still think that this is a piece of sharp social comedy; then you realise that it is also a political parable. Oglesby is writing about the psychology of aggression and interference, its motivations and its costs. Funny how wars always start next door. The tone darkens; anger and violence erupt. What gives the play its deadly irony is that it remains a grim comedy. Nicolas Kent directs it, rightly, as a Noël Coward play written by Sarah Kane, and the actors respond brilliantly, with a style of elegant savagery. JP

Nothing but the Truth
Hampstead, Three stars

Coming from South Africa, this is an important play. John Kani, one of his country’s leading actors, is writing about grievances, betrayals and reconciliations. He knows that resentment is a lasting disease — it’s embedded in your identity, feeds your pride, justifies your anger with yourself. He plays Sipho Makhaya, a librarian preparing for the funeral of his brother Tembo, who died in England. Why England? Why didn’t he come home after 1994? Was he the ANC hero people think he was? Did he have an affair with Sipho’s wife? Tembo’s daughter, Mandisa (Rosie Motene), arrives from London with Tembo’s ashes, which is hardly Sipho’s idea of a proper funeral. Mandisa, cheeky and independent, is more British than African, and the tension between her and Sipho’s daughter, Thando (Motshabi Tyelele), is a tension between cultures. This is the weak part of the play, with the two girls exchanging dreary political slogans. Sipho gets the best writing: he’s a grumpy conservative, proud but generous, with the kind of wary hope that only oppression can breed. JP

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