Measure for Measure (3)

Who will believe thee, Isabelle?

Bear with me, gentle reader, as I try to do something a little different in this review of the Donmar Warehouse production of Measure for Measure. You can take it as read that the staging, lighting, music and so on were all as excellent as you might expect, and I’ll probably get to the performances in due course. But this production was clearly designed to make a bold statement about gender and power imbalances, and that’s an area in which it is impossible as a woman not have an interest.

Twelfth Night (3)

The Young Vic Theatre

Photo by Johan Persson

It can sometimes be more difficult to review a show you didn’t like than one you – just repeating “I loved it” four hundred times might feel proportionate but not very informative for the reader. Lucky, then, that the Young Vic’s musical Twelfth Night was both brilliant and surprisingly meaty.