Three Sisters

Cheek by Jowl tour

This is a great production, and a thrilling rediscovery of a great and familiar play. Declan Donnellan has lifted from it the bittersweet mist of gentility and melancholy. The Prozorov girls are young, beautiful, playful and sophisticated: not provincial dreamers, but confident Moscow girls from a good family. They laugh a lot and, as the play darkens, the laughter becomes mocking, ironical, angry, desperate, a form of self-defence and relief. The tragic side of the play becomes more deeply painful: they are proud in defeat. The play is in Russian; most of the actors reached maturity in postGorbachev Russia, and their work has a defiant self-assertion. Alexander Feklistov’s middle-aged Vershinin is masterly: sweet-natured and a little awkward, he’s never been handsome, but he has a boyish eagerness that warms the play. Five stars

Kindertransport

Hampstead

Eva (Matti Houghton) is a nine-year-old German Jewish girl, one of thousands rescued by Britain just before the war began. She’s brought up in Manchester by Mrs Miller (Eileen O’Brien); she’s lost in translation and becomes Evelyn. But she learns that the past walks with you, reminding you of who you were, and still are. Denial is the last refuge of the guilty and the justification of the angry. Your homeland rejected you, and your naturalisation papers are a kind of revenge – look at me, I belong again. Diane Samuels’s play is a requiem for lost identities. Behind the denial, memory and conscience lie in wait, calling you back. Polly Teale’s soul-searching production breathes anger, insecurity and longing. The play is haunted by the silent Ratcatcher (Alexi Kaye Campbell), mythical creature of evil magic and destroyer of children. Can he destroy Eva/Evelyn? See this play. In this age of mass migration and exile, you need to understand people who live with one conscience and two hearts. Four stars

Elling

Bush

Elling (John Simm) is a mental hospital inmate, cool and precise, nattily dressed when not in his pyjamas. He shares a room with Bjarne (Adrian Bower), who discloses that he’s nearly 40 and has “never f***ed”. Ah, well, you think, something to look forward to there. They’re moved to a flat; Elling is befriended by an eccentric poet (Jonathan Cecil); and Bjarne’s dreams come true, thanks to a woman (Ingrid Lacey) in the flat above. Simon Bent’s play, based on a Norwegian work, itself an adaptation of a novel, is pottering whimsically about the question: are mad people really mad? Alas, it never rises to its subject. The acting is fine; but I hope the Bush will remain a hothouse of new work, not of adaptations of adaptations. Two stars

The Letter

Wyndham’s

Alan Strachan’s production could well bring Somerset Maugham’s plays back into circulation. Set in Malaya under British rule, it has one of the most stunning opening scenes, except that by the end of it, you think you know how it’s all going to end. That was exactly what Maugham intended. The play is a murder thriller, like White Mischief. But, even more than the film, it is about the dark underbelly of colonial life: its corruption, its put-on decency, the contempt for the natives and the willingness to do business with them when needs must. Jenny Seagrove plays one of those cool, poised Englishwomen who look as if they were made of icicles. but who can hold dark surprises for gullible men. It’s a shrewd, calm, sophisticated performance; only her voice production needs the odd push. Anthony Andrews is excellent as the friend and defence lawyer, bearing the white man’s burden of necessary corruption like a bull about to be slaughtered. Two stars

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