Kafka’s Monkey, Manchester
Home’s artistic director Walter Meierjohann got off to a distinctive start in the new theatre with The Funfair, but now he returns to something tried and tested with a revival of his remarkable 2009 production of Colin Teevan’s adaptation of Franz Kafka’s short story, A Report To An Academy. Kathryn Hunter, dressed in top hat and tails, reprises her astonishing and daring performance as Red Peter, a monkey caught in Africa who has adopted human behaviour so successfully that he can give a lecture. As we watch Hunter’s wizened face and sad eyes it becomes increasingly apparent that, in fact, it is not the ape who is a freak, but those of us watching.
Home, Wed to 27 Jun
LG
Luna Gale, London
The tough daily problems faced by social workers and the high price when things go wrong provide the drama in Luna Gale. A familiar subject in the UK, certainly, but this play comes from the pen of US writer Rebecca Gilman, whose previous works have been staged at the Royal Court and won her an Olivier nomination. This finds a veteran, if slightly jaded social worker – played by Sharon Small, recently seen at the Almeida in Carmen Disruption – dealing with a couple of drug-addicted teenagers and their baby. Her decision on the tot’s future causes a can of worms to be opened. It is directed by Michael Attenborough, former head man of both the Hampstead and Almeida theatres.
Hampstead Theatre, NW3, Sat to 18 Jul
MC
The Trial, London
The Young Vic has achieved its greatest successes of late by staging and reinterpreting the classics, and their production of Franz Kafka’s The Trial certainly fits that formula. This new adaptation by Nick Gill tells the tale of one man’s battle against bureaucracy and a totalitarian regime and will no doubt be visually compelling, directed as it is by the always fascinating Richard Jones and with design by Miriam Buether. The leading role of Josef K is taken by the inestimable Rory Kinnear, whose numerous credits include an Olivier award-winning Iago at the National Theatre two years ago and recent TV appearances in Count Arthur Strong and JK Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy.
Young Vic, SE1, Fri to 22 Aug
MC
Educating Rita, Chichester
Michael Buffong’s version of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons used an all-black cast, and offered a new perspective on a much-staged play. He’s aiming to do the same for Willy Russell’s two-hander about a university English lecturer who finds himself confounded by one of his students, Rita, a working-class woman who is determined to win herself an education. Thirty-five years young this year, Russell’s enduring comedy, inspired by his own return to college many years after leaving school aged 15, continues to fly the flag with warmth and comic precision for everyone’s right to an education. Lashana Lynch plays the plain-speaking Rita and Lenny Henry, who has reinvented himself as a fine actor, is Frank.
Festival Theatre: Minerva, Thu to 25 Jul
LG
The Lady Of The Lake, Keswick
The stories of King Arthur are normally associated with Cornwall, but Cumbria also lays claim to the mythical king thanks to suggestions that his court was held in Carlisle. In Benjamin Askew’s first full-length play, Arthur is elderly, defeated in love and battle, and wants to live quietly for the rest of his life. But that’s not going to happen when the world is in desperate need of a hero. Askew’s play apparently turns expectations and what we think we know about legendary Arthurian characters on their heads and, what’s more, is written in verse. In the past that might have put people off, but the success in the West End of Mike Bartlett’s King Charles III (which is embarking on a national tour in the autumn) suggests that verse is no longer a dirty world in the theatre.
Theatre By The Lake, Sat to 6 Nov
LG
The Driver’s Seat, Edinburgh
Who exactly is in control, and in the driver’s seat, in Muriel Spark’s 1970 novella? After all, we know from very early on that its heroine, Lise, who is journeying from a Scandinavian country across Europe, will end up “dead from multiple stab wounds, her wrists bound with a silk scarf and her ankles bound with a man’s necktie”. But maybe it’s the journey not the arrival that really matters in Spark’s psychologically acute story, which was nominated posthumously for the Lost Man Booker Prize in 2010. National Theatre of Scotland’s Laurie Sansom – who directed the James Plays – both adapts and directs a story about a woman, played by Morven Christie, who wants control over her life even when confronting death.
Royal Lyceum Theatre, Sat to 27 Jun
LG
