Total Eclipse

Menier Chocolate Factory Four stars

Whoever wrote the book of love, Christopher Hampton read it at an early age. His second play (1968), like Treats (1976), is about love as self-inflicted slavery. Based on the tempestuous three-year relationship between the 19th-century French poets Paul Verlaine and the teenage genius Arthur Rimbaud, it is a harsh, tragic tale, laced with vitriolic humour, of love as an instrument of torture. Rimbaud himself described their time together as an “époux infernal”. Jamie Doyle presents him as a cool, blue-eyed monster ready to experience everything and give as little as possible. He’s a charismatic destroyer, a methodical nihilist, a free spirit and, like most such people, cruel, selfish and cold as ice. Daniel Evans plays Verlaine as an emotionally and sexually greedy petit bourgeois, who, like the girl in Treats, feeds his confused sense of love on submission and victimhood. The play is set on a high oblong stage, with the audience on either side observing it like an immoral tournament. Paul Miller’s production rises to the writing, being brisk, ruthless and almost sadistically funny.

Tom Fool

Bush Four stars

Franz Xaver Kroetz (born 1946) writes about lower-class, urban German life just as Wedekind and the young Brecht wrote about the bourgeoisie. This play is a cruel mirror held up to nature, rather like a shaving mirror that tells you your skin resembles a potholed battlefield. English people like such plays because they have a penchant for self-mockery, as long as it’s not too personal; the Germans are less welcoming, as Kroetz found out. Otto Meier (Liam Brennan) is a semi-skilled factory worker: a small-minded, pedantic man who can bore his wife (Meg Fraser) going over and over last night’s beer-cellar bill. Their son, Ludwig (Richard Madden), an apathetic teenager, takes pocket money but won’t look for a job, which grates on Otto’s work ethic. A storm approaches when Ludwig steals some of Otto’s money. Kroetz’s writing is blunt and deliberately flat: eloquence and bitter humour lurk between the lines. Clare Lizzimore directs with an understanding of small minds and large grievances, and the actors brilliantly fill these half-broken bodies with humanity.

Much Ado About Nothing

Tobacco Factory, Bristol Three stars

You can tell whether a director has fully grasped the subtlety of this play from Beatrice’s words to Benedick: “Kill Claudio!” If she gets a laugh, you’ve wrong-footed the play. Andrew Hilton’s production doesn’t get a laugh; Beatrice is in deadly earnest. Lucy Black first appears carrying an edition of Othello: she’s clearly in two minds about men and she plays Beatrice as a prickly woman, rather like a tetchy librarian. Falling in love is quite an event for her, and she fills it with doubt, pain and humour. One note: she rushes her lines, losing some of the poetry. Jay Villiers’s Benedick is the jovial club-man type: a man’s man who knows less about life and women than he thinks. I liked Siobhan McMillan’s eager, pretty Hero; and Bill Wallis’s Dogberry is a treat.

The Skin Game

Orange Tree, Richmond Three stars

Tony Blair once said that the class war was over, but the struggle for equality was only just beginning. I’ve no idea what that means, but John Galsworthy’s play of the class wars (1920) should be perfectly comprehensible to anybody with their eyes open. It’s about an upper-middle-class county family who feel threatened by the Hornblowers, a newly arrived, aggressively prosperous and pushy industrialist’s family. The war that develops is about land, money and pride, and neither side comes out of it with their hands clean. Squire Hillcrist (Geoffrey Beevers) is a man of helpless and fretful decency; it’s his fiercely snobbish wife (Lynn Farleigh) who fights dirty. Sam Walters’s production catches perfectly the high moral-ironic tone, and there’s a first-class performance from Clive Francis as Hornblower: a tiger trapped by a tribe of devious foxes.

Ian Charleson Awards

The Ian Charleson Awards for young classical actors will be presented at the National Theatre on April 20, with John Barton as guest of honour. The final shortlist is: Bryan Dick (The Alchemist, National Theatre); Trystan Gravelle (A Winter’s Tale, RSC); Catherine Hamilton (The Madras House, Orange Tree); Tom Hiddleston (The Changeling, Cheek by Jowl); Sally Leonard (A Family Affair, Arcola); Hattie Morahan (The Seagull, National Theatre); Laura Rees (Titus Andronicus, Globe); Andrea Riseborough (Measure for Measure, Miss Julie; Peter Hall Company); Amit Shah (The Alchemist, National Theatre); Lex Shrapnel (Henry VI, RSC); Ony Uhiara (Pericles, RSC); Jodie Whittaker (Enemies, Almeida).

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