Let It Be
Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, until Oct 27, 2hrs 15mins
In 2012 The Beatles’ music was turned into a stage show. The marketing might have led you to think it was a musical, but really it was more of a high-class tribute act – and the same holds true for this somewhat lopsided sequel.
A group of consummate musicians impersonates the band. Emanuele Angeletti is particularly good as Paul McCartney, right down to the head waggles and knee jiggles, while Michael Gagliano seems to grow – along with the hairdo and attitude – into John Lennon as we hit the Abbey Road era.
Emanuele Angeletti (left) gave an impressive performance as Paul McCartney, even going as far to impersonate Paul’s head waggles and knee jiggles
Between songs, projections of news footage help transport us chronologically through Swinging Sixties Carnaby Street to the souring of the Vietnam War.
This first half is very similar to the old show, but let’s face it, if you’ve bought a ticket to ride this nostalgia fest, you’re probably not worried about revisiting the familiar. And tunes such as She Loves You, Day Tripper and Get Back just never get old.
The first half of the production is very similar to the old show, and projections of news footage move the musical along from the Sixties through to the Vietnam War
After the interval, however, things take a stranger turn. Rather than recreating gigs the Fab Four actually played, we’re presented with an invented 1980 reunion; the audience are exhorted, with heavy emphasis, to ‘imagine’ what such a concert might have been like. This is a pretty preposterous notion, and Michael Gyngell could have directed it with rather more tongue in cheek. While there’s mischief in having McCartney do backing vocals for My Sweet Lord or Lennon strumming along to Live And Let Die, these solo-career numbers never come together as well as the best of The Beatles’ back catalogue.
The audience are taken to an imaginary 1980 reunion after the interval; however, director Michael Gyngell could have added more tongue in cheek to this surprise scene
You might expect a little more bang for your buck in the orchestral department too: Penny Lane’s horn sections and the clarinet on When I’m 64, for instance, are recreated by all-purpose synths. Nonetheless, it’s still a joy to hear these beloved songs live, and we’re encouraged to twist and shout along. Approached as a good night out, it’s a trip. As a concept it’s somewhat ominous – will the next version imagine singalongs from beyond the grave? Let’s hope they really do let it be.
The Merry Wives of Windsor
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until Sep 22, 2hrs 50 mins
Rating: 
Merry Wives of Chingford, more like. Directed with comic vigour by Fiona Laird, the action is relocated to the so-called borough of Windsor & Essex and the cast sound like characters in EastEnders. The women are tanned to a crisp.
David Troughton plays the sexual predator Falstaff in a full fat suit and rude codpiece. He famously ends up in a laundry basket – or in this case a wheelie bin – being poured into a ditch, as the ladies take revenge on him.
David Troughton (above) plays Falstaff, who is poured into a ditch as the ladies carry out their revenge
Beth Cordingly and Rebecca Lacey are strong as the scheming wives, and Jonathan Cullen, as the French Dr Caius, is a hoot. Vince Leigh is dead geezer-ish as the jealous Ford.
I found the blingy Essex vulgarity a bit wearying and the amount of rewriting offensive. But it’s got pace and lots of laughs and it’s very well acted.
A much needed hit for the RSC.
Robert Gore-Langton
Emilia
Shakespeare’s Globe, London, until Sat, 2hrs 50mins
Rating: 
This is the story of Emilia Bassano, believed to be Shakespeare’s muse and the mysterious Dark Lady of the sonnets. Born in 1569, she was the daughter of a royal musician and, most unusually for a woman back then, a published poet.
The Globe claims Emilia has been ‘erased’ from history by the patriarchy. But the truth is that we know next to nothing about most of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, including the man himself.
Leah Harvey (above) performs the title role, along with Vinette Robinson and Clare Perkins in this all-female cast
Morgan Lloyd Malcolm expands her play (the all-female cast play blokes and all) into the vacuum, imagining Emilia through three actresses in the title role: Leah Harvey (left), who’s excellent, Clare Perkins and Vinette Robinson.
Among the walk-on parts is Shakespeare. Nice to see Will in his own theatre, even if he’s played by Charity Wakefield as a plagiaristic little twerp.
The audience lapped up this passionate sisterhood romp that’s part Blackadder, part agitprop. I found it exasperating. Overlong and generally up itself, the show tells you a lot about gender politics now. But it tells you precisely nothing about the work of the woman it rightly celebrates.
Robert Gore-Langton
Macbeth
Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre, York, until Fri, 3hrs
Rating:
This pop-up Elizabethan-style playhouse is offering four classics in its first season (Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo And Juliet and Richard III).
The trappings of Damian Cruden’s production – swords and drums, leather and fur, much shouting – are vaguely ‘traditional’. Yet the witches here are not supernatural beings but a put-upon servant underclass taking revenge. They merely pretend to be witches.
Richard Standing (right) played the title role in Damian Cruden’s version of the play, alongside Leandra Ashton (left) who gave a disappointing performance as Lady Macbeth
Cleverly, they’re also doubled with the play’s hired murderers, whose discussion of their utter desperation provides a clear motive. While you wouldn’t always want to do away with the spooky stuff, Cruden’s interpretation feels impressively plausible.
Elsewhere, clarity and pacing are patchy. Richard Standing, left, brings a natural, thoughtful quality to Macbeth’s soliloquies, but his relationship with Leandra Ashton’s disappointing Lady Macbeth is inert.
Holly Williams