The Lady from the Sea at Donmar Warehouse was clinical and cold

I keep going to see Ibsen plays in the hope that I will understand what the magic is and start to appreciate them more but it has been a mixed journey so far and while some productions have been reasonable none have been exceptional and others have been disappointing. This was one of the reasonable ones.

It was a late decision to go and see it. I had a free evening, had seen decent reviews (I do appreciate that theatres only share the good ones) and there was a lone free seat in the middle of the Circle (A37) so I forked out £30. It was a good seat, even if the woman next to me spent the whole evening trying to eat sweets quietly and failing.

This was a new version of The Lady from the Sea and the biggest change was moving the Norwegian characters with their Norwegian names to the Caribbean. Not sure why. I had only seen the play once before so I did not expect to catch many of the differences.

The Lady herself was played with much aplomb by Nikki Amuka-Bird and the rest of the cast did a fine job too. I particularly enjoyed Ellie Bamber as Hilde, the Lady's younger step-daughter, and that have been because as the young cynic she was the most believable character.

I liked the set too with it's simplicity and its quirky water tank that contained a model of an island with a submerged boat and houses.

The acting and production were unable to rescue a play in which the characters are not believable and the story does nothing. In the best part of two uninterrupted hours there were no wow moments and there were no characters that I cared for, except (possibly) the eldest step-daughter and the play was not about her.

The Lady from the Sea was well constructed but lacked any emotion. It was clinical and cold. I admired the professionalism of the production and enjoyed the story but it left no last impression.

The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui at Donmar Warehouse entertained but failed to excite

My main reason for going to see The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui was Bertolt Brecht though, as is often the case, the main theme of the play's publicity was its star, Lenny Henry. His presence did help my decision to go and I forked out a meagre £30 for Circle  Row A  Seat  5.

It was obvious that something was different about the performance as soon as I arrived and was approached by one of the cast who engaged me in friendly conversation. Audience engagement was a large, and successful part of the production. The front row downstairs was set up with tables as if in a bar and during the evening a few people were enticed onto the main part of the stage, mostly to be killed or abused.

Arturo Ui dabbled with comedy, music and menace but never seemed quite sure what it was really trying to do and in doing many different things decently it did none of them brilliantly and it failed to find a winning spark in any of them.

I would have liked more menace and more music and more of the other things that made the recent production The Beggar's Opera at National Theatre such a success. Arturo Ui paled in comparison to that production and while it was undoubtedly fun it was never any more than that.

The Recruiting Officer at the Donmar Warehouse

Farces have had a good showing in the West End recently with big shows like One Man, Two Guvnors and Noises Off so it is no great surprise to see The Recruiting Officer make another appearance.

The play is now a shade over three hundred tears old, as revealed by the language, but the themes and plot are as familiar today as they were then and the age is no barrier.

This was only my second visit to the Donmar and my first downstairs and my first chance to appreciate the cosiness of the space.

There are four rows of seats up close to three sides of the stage. I was in the third row near to one of the corners with a good view of the stage despite the shallow slope in the seating and the tall young woman in the front row.

As now seems to be common practise in theatres without curtains, the action starts while we are all settling down.

This time we were entertained by a small group of players and then some of the cast appeared to light the many candles that formed the main part of the decoration.

It worked well despite the unwillingness of some people to see the pre-play as part of the show and, therefore, took it as an opportunity to carry on talking. Why do these people even go to the theatre?

As the play opens we meet Sergeant Kite played by Mackenzie Crook, one of the several big names littered across the cast.

He is in Shrewsbury with Captain Plume to recruit men in to the army by any means possible. They also have ambitions with the local ladies. This is one of the rewards of a travelling solider and Sgt. Kite produces a long list of all his wives that he keeps to remember them all.

Capt. Plume's intentions are more serious and he has his eye on Melinda who plays hard to get with an impish vengeance.

Rachael Stirling was Melinda and won the acting accolades despite some very tough competition.

The actors all played to the crowd brilliantly, even involving a lady in the front-row several times by giving her things to hold etc.

They moved to the edge of the stage regularly to speak directly to us about their thoughts and plans.

There were lots of great moments along the way and the one that sticks with me the most was in the scene where Sgt. Kite was disguised as a German fortune teller tricking people in to joining the army.

The flamboyant Captain Brazen (Mark Gatiss) paid a visit and on his way out ignored the prop door and walked off through what was meant to be a wall with an I-can't-be-arsed shake of his head.

And it was the frequent moments like that that made the play. The story was farcical but fairly simple and needed more than the script to carry it, hence the star-strung cast and the strong direction.

The sign of a good craftsman is that they make difficult things look easy and that is just what all the creatives do here. It's a team performance that delivers a steady stream of fun.

Anna Christie at Donmar Warehouse

I'll start with an overdue credit.

One of the reasons that I have gone to so many more plays this year is thanks to the efforts of Elaine Bodenitz of the Logica Sports and Social Club.

She arranges the group bookings that take me to see things that I would otherwise have missed or overlooked. Thanks Elaine :-)

And it was thanks to her that I found myself at the Donmar Warehouse (my first time there) to see Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie which won the 1922 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

It was the play's heritage that attracted me and the presence of Jude Law that clinched it.

I'm not quite sure where Theatreland is meant to be as you never seem to be that far away from a theatre in London but the Donmar Warehouse feels a little bit off the beaten track for theatregoers sitting as it does among the high-style and high-cost shops just to the North of Covent Garden underground station.

The theatre is in a warehouse, as its name promises, and that is good. Inside it reminded me of places like the Young Vic, Arcola and Orange Tree.

It is bare, functional, industrial and charming because of all that.

And, as you might have deduced from the photo of the stage, it has a gallery and I was sitting in it. Downstairs the stage is surrounded by the audience on three sides making it intimate in just the way that I like.

The picture also shows the simplicity of the staging with the wooden floor and walls providing the framework for a bar, the deck of a boat and the inside of a boat moored in a harbour.

All that is required to complete the transformation from one to the other is the placement of a few props such as a few bar stools or a bed.

All looked set well at that point; an award-wining play, a good theatre and a simple stage, all things that I like. Good omens.

The first of the main characters that we meet is Chris Christopherson who captains a small coal barge plying its trade on the East Coast of America.

Chris, we soon learn, is Swedish but gave his life to the sea many years ago. He had a wife back in Sweden but she had died. He was left with a five year old daughter who he palmed off with relatives in the farming communities of Minnesota.

Chris fatalistically blames the sea for everything that happens to him. The sea has killed many people that he knew, including members of his close family, but he cannot escape from its lure and nor does he want to.

He lives from day to day but generally happy with his lot. He has a loose relationship with a woman when we meet him but they are just ships passing in the night and she moves on. Their is no rancour or regret, this is just how things are.

David Hayman plays Chris brilliantly carrying the Swedish heritage and the fatalism with absolute conviction.

Then we meet Anna.

She has come looking for her father who she has not seen since she was abandoned as a five year-old. The bar is the only address she has for him and she writes to him there and arrives soon after Chris reads the letter. He's not in the bar when she arrives so we get to see a little of her before he does.

Anna is smartly dressed but sits comfortably in the sailors' bar drinking whiskey. That seems a little surprising at the time but becomes less so as we learn more about her.

She had had a very rough time growing up being treated as a slave by the family and being raped by one of the sons.

Ruth Wilson plays Anna with quiet emotion and grace.

Anna joins her father on the coal barge and during a storm they pick up some shipwrecked sailors, including the proud Irish stoker Mat Burke.

Mat is a simple (but not stupid) worker. He is proud of his strength developed from hard years of shovelling coal and has a girl in every port. Like Chris he is captivated by life at sea but does not share Chris' fatalism about it.

Mat (understandably) makes an earnest play for Anna as he recovers from his ordeal and after a few weeks he decides that he is going to marry her (she is not expected to have any choice in that). The rest of the play resolves around that decision.

Jude Law is sensational and is only prevented from dominating the show by the equally good performances from David Hayman and Ruth Wilson.

He could have been born for the part with his stoker's physique, curly ginger hair and thick Irish accent.

I could go on heaping praise on the play, production and acting but it's sufficient to say that it is faultless in every respect.