Haymarket Theatre Royal

Packed your fascinator? Rehearsed your most attractive crying face? Well, good; over in Mansfield – by way of the Theatre Royal Haymarket – the wedding of the year is about to take place. Local girl Sylvia (Sinéad Matthews) is marrying Polish lad Marek (Julian Kostov), and the audience, some of whom are sat directly on the stage, are all invited.  The ceremony plays out in real time at Beth Steel’s Till The Stars Come Down, now running in the West End after debuting at the National Theatre early last year. Director Bijan Sheibani sucks you right into this world through fast-paced dialogue and artfully constructed tableaus. It is heady, hilarious and emotional; the wedding itself might be a car crash, but this imaginative production is anything but. As the lights come up on Samal Blak’s set, little of the grandeur associated with getting hitched is visible. There’s a huge disco ball hanging overhead, whizzing fragmented stars across the theatre, but this romantic image dissipates when it comes face to face with  the realities of the working class family wedding: the electric fan, the TK Maxx shopper, the extension cord. Here, the sublime and the mundane exist in constant opposition; some characters dream aloud about the enormity of space and the universe, while others discuss their greying pubes. Matthews’s Sylvia, our scratchy voiced bride, is getting ready for her big day. Buzzing with nervous energy, she is something of a supporting figure to her conversation-dominating...

This revival of Shakespeare’s great tragedy of race and jealousy won’t get a fraction of the attention that the 2025 Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal production received, but there’s every hope it’ll be the better Othello. Certainly it doesn’t have $3,000 tickets, so that’s something. The work of director Tom Morris has been little seen in London since he co-directed War Horse and then went off to run the Bristol Old Vic – but now he’s back with a bang, as this production marks the start of a five year partnership with Chris Harper Productions to direct Shakespeare plays for the West End.  Of course you need names for West End Shakespeare, and Morris’s cast is headed by a fascinating choice of Othello. As a big Black British star, David Harewood is a shoo-in for the role. But what’s most interesting about his casting is that this is his second time doing it: as a young man he was famously the first Black actor to play the role at the National Theatre, in 1997; he’s indicated he’s looking forward to returning to the part without all the cultural baggage and weight of expectations. He’ll be joined by Toby Jones as Iago, looking to shed his saintly Mr Bates vs the Post Office image, while Desdemona will be played by US actor Caitlin FitzGerald, probably best known here for her role as Kendall’s trobled girlfriend Tabitha in Succession.  In terms of clues at to how Morris’s revival will play out, we’re told it’ll be modern dress, and it seems reasonably likely that the...