Not so long ago, I watched the 1950 film version of Sunset Boulevard for the first time. The plot includes Norma Desmond writing the script for a new film about Salome, the biblical character who requested the beheading of John the Baptist. This became the subject of Oscar Wilde’s 1891 play.

I know nothing about Salome, but I do know something about throwing myself into things, so I decided to stream Yaël Farber’s 2017 play based on her story. Farber took the Wilde play and added some ancient Arabic and Hebraic and came up with… Salomé.

This is a one-act play lasting about an hour and a half. It felt like the whole thing was shouted, except for the occasional bit which was screamed. I think this might be an attempt at ‘urgency’ or high emotion, but it is exhausting. I also had no clue what was going on. It would be traditional in a post like this to summarise the plot, but the experience of seeing the show hasn’t adequately equipped me to do that.

It was, however, far from a complete disaster. The lighting and staging were incredible. Tuning out the unintelligible script, this was an absolute treat for the eyes, a bare-bones stage utterly transformed from moment to moment. There were numerous curtains, cascading sand, splashy-watery bits, a giant ladder, and gorgeously atmospheric lighting.

There were revolves which rarely stood still, even when their revolutions seemed to do more to distract than enhance. There are some stunningly camp bits of self-conscious tableau: they re-create Da Vinci’s Last Supper repeatedly, and even revolve that—I mean, who hasn’t wanted to see a representation of the last supper on a lazy Susan? It’s among the most exuberant staging I’ve ever seen, especially for only having a handful of bits of set.

There’s also a brilliantly sung soundtrack accompanying the whole thing.

I suspect there is a lot to like in this, and that—to be honest —most of it sailed above my head. If you’ve more idea of the background, you’ll probably get far more out of this than I did.

Salomé is available to stream on National Theatre at Home until at least December.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is probably Tennessee Williams’s most famous play. I think most people are culturally aware of the play and its plot, even if—like me—they haven’t ever sat through a full production. For the uninitiated, it’s a play set over a single evening in 1950s Mississippi, as a family gathers at the familial plantation home to celebrate the birthday of the patriarch, Big Daddy. Over the course of the evening, various deceptions emerge and reveal the true relationships between the characters, and most especially between Brick (one of Big Daddy’s children) and his wife Maggie.

It’s one of those plays that I’m slightly embarrassed to have never seen, so I decided to correct that by streaming the 2018 National Theatre production starring Sienna Miller and Jack O’Connell and directed by Benedict Andrews.

There are some strange decisions in this production. Andrews has attempted to transplant the action from the 1950s to the present day, which I didn’t find convincing: the update seemed to be confined to including mobile phone calls. Yet, it’s surely the case that the era of messaging and social media would have had a more far-reaching impact on plot points. The plot is also rooted in the social norms of the 1950s, which don’t straightforwardly read across to contemporary society.

The staging also has some strange decisions. The pared down set essentially consists of a bed and a shower, the latter essentially being a standalone pipe arising from the bedroom carpet. Alcohol is a key feature of the plot, but the ‘drinks cabinet’ is a set of bottles, glasses, and ice placed on the floor at the front of the stage. I’m sure this is supposed to be representative of something, but to me, it just seemed plainly awkward, with actors having to make all sorts of distracting moves to fill their glasses.

The performances, however, were mostly spot on. The accents were a little distracting at times, particularly at moments when they became very uneven, but there were some genuinely exceptional moments: the key middle scene of the play, a lengthy discussion between Brick and Big Daddy, had real emotional heft in this production. This is a section that relies heavily on social norms, and yet of O’Connell and Colm Meaney’s acting easily cleared that hurdle.

This is the only production I’ve seen, so I’ve nothing to compare it to besides the production in my mind. I suspect that the creative decisions meant that this didn’t give the best possible account of the text, but I still enjoyed it, and it’s still well-worth seeing.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is available to stream on NT at Home until at least March 2024.

The Cellist is a one-act ballet choreographed by Cathy Marston with music by Philip Feeney. It tells the story of the life of the noted British cellist, Jacqueline du Pré, who career–and ultimately life–was cut short due to multiple sclerosis. I streamed the 25 February 2020 performance at the Royal Opera House, starring Lauren Cutherbertson, Marcelino Sambé and Matthew Ball via Royal Opera House Stream.

If it weren’t for Wendy, I would probably have no idea who Jacqueline du Pré was, and so this whole ballet would probably have passed me by. I’m also not a regular fan of ballet—I often find the plots quite hard to follow, and find myself distracted by that. So, if this hadn’t been available for streaming, I would almost certainly never have seen it. I logged on more out of curiosity about how Feeney would reference various cello concerti in his score than because of any particular interest in the dancing: the score turned out to be brilliant.

I put this on almost in the background, thinking I’d do other things while I listened, but quickly found myself drawn in. Marston’s masterstroke was to cast a dancer in the role of ‘The Instrument’ rather than using a prop. This turned the entire setup into a love story, contrasting the platonic but inseparable relationship between du Pré and her cello with the profound human love story between du Pré and her husband. This was fascinating to watch.

Cutherbertson’s ability to communicate the complex emotions du Pré must have felt when her symptoms started was remarkable: confusion, anxiety, and fear seemed almost to age her before our eyes. I was less convinced by the personification of some of her symptoms, danced by the chorus surrounding her, which I sometimes found really quite difficult to interpret. But the orchestral scene was excellent, and the three central performances were all so strong throughout the whole piece. Who knew someone could have such impact while pretending to be cello?

The set too, redolent of the inside of a cello, was inspired.

This was a remarkable hour of performance.

One of my pet peeves with any play (or book or film) is when I’m told within the text what I’m supposed to be feeling. There is nothing that does quite so much to telegraph a lack of confidence in the work than to tell the audience how to respond. I’m afraid The Boy with Two Hearts falls into exactly this trap.

This is a stage adaptation by Phil Porter of Hamed and Hassim Amiri’s memoir recounting their family’s harrowing journey from Afghanistan to the UK. The family was forced to flee Herat in 2000, after the Taliban ordered the killing of the matriarch for speaking out on women’s rights. Complicating matters, Hamed and Hassim’s brother Hussein has a serious congenital heart problem.

The play follows the parents and three young children as they cross Europe, trying to reach the UK for both family safety and NHS treatment for Hussein. I saw the play in my living room via National Theatre at Home, which is never quite the same experience as being in the same room as the performers.

The staging was admirably inventive, making use of projections to allow some dialogue to take place in Farsi with translations integrated into the scene. The show was scored throughout, with a singer (and co-composer) Elaha Soroor wandering around the set providing an elegiac backing of Afghan song.

The overall effect was moving, and it brought real human insight and compassion to the topic of asylum. It is well worth watching or going to see.

But I did have issues.

Firstly, a minor nitpicky staging issue which irritated me repeatedly. We are introduced at the start of the play to the fact that the family sits in a circle to eat and talk. Because they are on stage, they are not actually sat in a circle while they are talking about being sat in a circle, presumably because we wouldn’t see much and half the cast would have their backs to us. This is fair enough, except for the fact that they then call back repeatedly throughout the play—including in the very climax—to the circle. I don’t think it works to repeatedly call back to an image that the production never quite delivered.

Secondly, and I think this is a book-to-stage translation thing, there is a problematic lack of detail in some parts. I spent much of the first half wondering what the main character’s motivations were, partly because we are told nothing of their background.

Thirdly, the big one. Don’t tell me what to feel. This is a sad play. It is also a play that highlights stunning hypocrisy in the way we treat people and the way we collectively choose to view the world. We are only happy for the NHS to treat a severely sick kid once he’s completed a life-threatening journey across a continent: how can we be so cruel? And yet, the audience is directly addressed and told that this is not a sad play, and that it is actually a play about it being wonderful that everyone looks after each other.

Issues aside—I’d still recommend it.

The Boy with Two Hearts is streaming on National Theatre at Home until 14 December.

A stage play inspired by a documentary film about some political television debates from 1960s America doesn’t feel intuitively like it would have much to offer. One could reasonably assume that the effect would have been dulled and flattened by the distance in time and multiple re-interpretations from the source material.

Yet, this was exhilarating. Graham’s script dramatises the US debates between Gore Vidal and William F Buckley Jr on the ABC network, programmed around the Republican and Democratic national conventions. It explores the behind-the-scenes drive within ABC to stage these debates—it’s about ratings, as ever it is—as well as the personalities and motivations of Vidal and Buckley.

Zachary Quinto and David Harewood were excellent in this production at London’s Noël Coward theatre: both are famous for other roles, but fairly unknown to me. The staging was inspired, using live projections to make relevant scenes at once theatrical and televisual.

Graham presents this series of debates as the source of all personality and opinion-led discussion of politics on television. Clever scripting—much of it seemingly based on well-chosen verbatim quotes—draws parallels with current politics. The whole play felt immediately relevant to modern politics and media… though the time-jump at the end felt a bit like it rammed that message home harder than was necessary.

Yet, the script as a whole was definitely the biggest star here, cleverly combining direct quotations and zingy, catty one-liners with urgent questions about society’s approach to politics.

I really enjoyed this.

‘Best of Enemies’ continues at the Noël Coward theatre until 18 February.

I’ve long been a bit sceptical of filmed stage plays, but I’d heard so much about the power of Judie Comer’s performance in this one-woman play that I thought I’d stream it.

The plot concerns a barrister who specialises in defending sexual assault cases, but is then assaulted herself. For the first two-thirds, this felt like an virtuoso performance of a well-scripted but humdrum plot. It felt like a legal equivalent of the doctor-turned-patient cliché, with much the same by-rote conclusions about not giving enough consideration to the perspective of the victim/patient.

This impression wasn’t helped by the sound design, which is also a cliché: heartbeat-driven tension beds, which feel as though they do more to undermine the raw honesty of Comer’s performance than to support it.

But then: that final section! Emotion meets polemic meets rage meets eloquence meets honesty. Never mind the theatre, you could have heard a pin drop in my carpeted living room.

This turned out to be an astonishing performance of an excellent script.

’Prima Facie’ is available to stream via National Theatre at Home until 9 March.