1 Beyond Caring
Alexander Zeldin’s devised piece is set in a meat-packing factory where a quartet of workers on zero-hours contracts are at the beck and call both of a supervisor who humiliates them at any turn and of capitalism itself. While there are no dramatic fireworks, it’s a beautifully wrought show that quietly charts the effects of austerity on ordinary people.
Theatre Delicatessen, Sheffield, Wed to 9 Jul
2 The Deep Blue Sea
Helen McCrory is Hester Collyer in Terence Rattigan’s 1952 play about the inequalities of love. Collyer is the judge’s wife who deserts him because of her passion for Freddie, a former RAF pilot who had a “good war” but who is now hitting the bottle. Carrie Cracknell’s production is period perfect, but this is very much McCrory’s evening and she is magnificent in her despair.
National Theatre: Lyttelton, SE1, to 21 Sep
3 Titanic
No, not a stage version of the James Cameron epic, but a revival of Maury Yeston’s 1997 musical charting the hopes and dreams of the passengers on the ill-fated voyage. Not much has stayed afloat at the Charing Cross Theatre of late, but things are looking far more buoyant with the arrival of Thom Southerland as artistic director. Here he revives his own 2013 Southwark Playhouse chamber production with real shoestring style.
Charing Cross Theatre, WC2, to 6 Aug
4 1984
Some shows keep bouncing back into the West End and Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan’s chilling adaptation of George Orwell’s dystopian novel is one of them. The success is well deserved: this look at a world where love is forbidden, history erased and language twisted for the purposes of Big Brother is brilliantly realised. Cleverly drawing on the novel’s crucial appendix, it becomes not only a retelling of the doomed affair between Winston and Julia, but a multimedia speculation on the nature of truth, the treachery of language and the deceits of the heart.
Playhouse Theatre, WC2, to 29 Oct
5 The Taming Of The Shrew
Shakespeare’s war of the sexes is not a pretty play; there’s little to laugh about as Petruchio bends his wife to his rule. Caroline Byrne’s superb revival doesn’t sacrifice the darkness – this Petruchio is a particularly nasty braggart – but the production, which features an onstage Irish band and some terrific physical comedy, also has sunniness in abundance. Relocated to 1916 Ireland amid the independence struggle, this is an evening of wit, passion and politics.
