The Argument
Theatre Royal, Bath Until Saturday, 1hr 15mins
Whenever Felicity Kendal makes a stage appearance, audiences behave as if a baby deer has wandered on. There’s an audible sigh of pleasure, a collective look of endearment.
I normally expect her to be nuzzled by the front rows. But not here. In a new one-acter on the perils of arguing, by the novelist William Boyd, she’s playing Chloe, an interfering cow of a mother, married to a pompous drunk.
She has somehow managed to stick to the highway code of marriage that says you should never abandon your vehicle.
Felicity Kendal, elegant as ever, talks and vapes as she diagnoses her irritating daughter’s love life. She’s stuck with her extremely frank hubby Frank (played by the actor Rupert Vansittart)
The evening starts promisingly (though it goes downhill) with her sharp-tongued daughter – a chip off the old block – called Meredith (Alice Orr-Ewing). She’s a curator at the British Museum, and her husband Pip (Simon Harrison) is big in public relations.
They are having a nasty barney about a film they’ve just seen. This takes place in their London dream pad (beautifully designed by Simon Higlett) with expensive, pristine cream furnishings on which the couple implausibly drink red wine.
Their row leads to a revelation that means Pip ends up exiled to Tooting Bec, where his best friend Tony (Esh Alladi) imparts some home truths. Meredith’s best friend Jane (Sarah Earnshaw) also provides cold comfort.
Chloe’s sharp-tongued daughter – a chip off the old block – called Meredith (Alice Orr-Ewing) and her husband Pip (Simon Harrison) have a nasty barney about a film they’ve just seen
Kendal, elegant as ever, talks and vapes as she diagnoses her irritating daughter’s love life. It’s not much of a part. Give me The Good Life any day. Here she’s stuck with her extremely frank hubby Frank (played by the sterling comic actor Rupert Vansittart), a vodka-sodden surgeon in orange trousers whose snobby dislike of his son-in-law comes out in spades.
Boyd is a terrific prose writer. But while this short, shouty, very sweary middle-class comedy gets some laughs, its speeches of shocking honesty feel oddly untruthful – and no one here evokes a scintilla of our concern.
Christopher Luscombe, a director with a sense of fun, cranks it up as best he can but this is still disappointingly thin stuff.
Evita Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, London
Until September 21, 2hrs 10 mins
Rating: 
Forget Argentina. This new, de-varnished Evita opens in what looks like downtown Hong Kong. Smoke bombs, flares, placards and confetti spew all over the steps of the stage, the band half-hidden behind huge letters of the title.
Samantha Pauly’s cold, raven-haired Evita banishes any memory of Elaine Paige or, come to that, Madonna in the film version. She’s decked out in a tiny white dress and pumps, her pristine voice rising to a stiletto shriek.
Don’t Cry For Me Argentina sounds like a demand you’d be wise to obey.
Samantha Pauly’s cold, raven-haired Evita banishes any memory of Elaine Paige. She’s decked out in a tiny white dress and pumps, her pristine voice rising to a stiletto shriek
Trent Saunders’s Che – the ubiquitous narrator – comes across as a cynical, boilingly angry post-grad student. Enemies of Ektor Rivera’s macho Juan Perón are liquidated by a wow-inducing female assassin in a conical bra and jodhpurs, with a body of flexible steel.
Jamie Lloyd’s daring, pop- video production features Fabian Aloise’s wild, boy-band choreography. But the show rather trades in its heart for spray cans, pyrotechnics and emotional austerity.
Even the ache of Another Suitcase In Another Hall, sung by Frances Mayli McCann, is muted.
That said, what great music this is. An ace band emphatically delivers Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s best creation – an ever-relevant brew of rock, politics and populism.
8 Hotels
Minerva Theatre, Chichester Until Saturday, 1hr 40mins
Rating:
Paul Robeson – of Ol’ Man River fame – was the first 20th- century black actor to play Othello in both the US and this country. Though a huge singer-star in his day, he was treated with less respect in segregated America than Othello was in Shakespeare’s tragedy.
This new, semi-factual play concerns his North American tour in Othello, starting in 1944. Robeson is having affairs galore – notably with Uta Hagen as Desdemona, who is married to José Ferrer (Ben Cura), playing Iago.
Ferrer in turn is sleeping with a character further down the billing. Actors are often compared to children: here they’re more like rabbits.
American actor Tory Kittles is an impressive Paul Robeson, a convinced Communist of great personal courage but also a sexual opportunist
American actor Tory Kittles is an impressive Robeson, a convinced Communist of great personal courage but also a sexual opportunist. Emma Paetz plays Hagen with memorable swish, coaching her privately volatile lover to be less monotonous on stage.
Pandora Colin has the best lines as the tour’s perceptive English director.
Nicholas Wright’s play, directed by Richard Eyre, is uneven and over-packed with themes. But it’s always intriguing. You get passion, betrayal and politics, set in hotels where Robeson’s kind weren’t welcome.
Musik
Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh Until Saturday, 1hr
Rating:
Frances Barber and Pet Shop Boys reunite to resurrect a character she played in their 2001 musical Closer To Heaven. Now Billie Trix – the drug-huffing, name- dropping, talent-free but monstrously egotistical German rock star – is back, with a one-woman cabaret show that transfers to the capital next month.
Pet Shop Boys have written four new songs, which feel a little underwhelming – although I loved Trix’s move from folkie warbler to disco queen with the spangly banger Ich Bin Musik.
Reviving her Vietnam protest song, Run, Girl, Run – inspired by the image of a girl fleeing napalm – is a low, however. The target may be self-aggrandising pop stars but it still feels in poor taste.
Frances Barber inhabits Trix with the right blend of rackety bile and fabulous grandeur, but while there are some biting one-liners, the targets for her satire are often pretty soft
Barber inhabits Trix with the right blend of rackety bile and fabulous grandeur, but while there are some biting one-liners in Jonathan Harvey’s script (‘I was a zeitgeist for sore eyes’; ‘Lou Reed once said to me, “Even your clitoris is shaped like a treble clef”’), the targets for her satire are often pretty soft.
Still, there’s fun in the way she furiously claims to have been constantly ripped off: apparently her song Little Can Of Soup inspired Andy Warhol, and even Donald Trump got his mania for building walls from her.
Holly Williams
‘Musik’ transfers to London’s Leicester Square Theatre from September 3-7