Arden of Faversham (Mark Carlisle) is a respectable chap, nice enough, but unfortunately his wife (Rachel Dale), her lover (Jonathan Woolf) and Green , who’s land he’s appropriated, all want to kill him. They hire a pair of London ruffians to do the deed, but these two turn out to be a right pair of clowns, and repeated fail. It’s almost a sixteenth century keystone caper. In the meantime, the wife and the lover seem to have the sort of relationship that would have Mariella Frostrup telling her to learn some self-respect. He’s clearly after her money, and she’s caught in one of those unpleasant, vaguely masochistic things where she can’t cope with his rejection, but knows its not right.

The Rose in Southwark is another tiny space, a raised platform overlooking the archaeological dig of the original Rose theatre where this play was first performed over 400 years ago. We sit along the wall, with the actors between us and the red lights outlining the area of the original theatre. It’s a small audience, and a strong bladder is needed for a two hour play with no interval and no loo on the premises, but well worth it.

Perhaps its just as well the theatre isn’t full, as the ruffians give us some excellent clowning, creeping behind the chairs, telling me to ‘sshhh’ while they stake out Arden on his way back from dinner, getting someone in the front row to hold their pistol and at one point, picking up my shoe (sore feet, slipped my shoes off).

The cast is energetic and enthusiastic with good performances from all. Its a rare chance to see a play which was once very popular but now not often performed.

Arden of Faversham runs at the Rose Theatre until 7 July. Tickets £8-10.

The tiny space of the basement in the Leicester Square Theatre has no room for a balcony. The audience area, with dining chairs and a bar feels like a thirties cabaret, barely separated from the set. Combined with the music, much of it played live by the actors, the whole space invokes a tense Verona with violence never far away.

This is not the sumptuous, multifaceted Shakespeare you get at the RSC. It’s pared down, with a small cast and smaller budget, getting to the tragedy at the heart of the play and laying it bare. This theatre should be very full.

Romeo and Juliet runs at the Leicester Square Theatre until 11 July and tickets are £15-20.

Having observed our recent elections, she told us that people back in NZ thought it quite funny that everyone here was getting worked up about a ‘hung’ parliament and a coalition – coalitions are the norm in New Zealand, as indeed they are in most democracies.

Her advice to Greens in the UK is to work for electoral reform above everything else.

Its a simple message, and one I believe the Green Party here should take to heart. Our one Green MP is a fantastic achievement, but could so easily be reversed at the next election. We gained less than 2% of the vote, and our 285000 voters are represented by our one MP. In European and London elections, we regularly get 10-15% of the vote, suggesting that we have a strong appeal, but people are reluctant to vote for us for Westminster because we’re very unlikely to win. Locally, we have about 10% of the council vote in Camden, and only one councillor elected this time.

If politics is the best way to achieve change then the first change must be a fair way of electing politicians.

Jeanette went on to talk about some of her thoughts on the way that New Zealand was tackling climate change, or not tackling climate change, with the new National (Tory) government being unusually sceptical and reluctant to implement carbon reduction measures. And then she said something which was very obvious, made complete sense, and which had never occured to me before. She said that we could have all the renewables in the world, all the efficiency measures, but it didn’t matter a jot unless the coal stays in the ground.

New Zealand has about 8.6 billion tonnes of economic reserves of low quality coal, and the state-owned coal company seems hell-bent on mining it and using it in whatever way they can. This means open-cast mining in Otago and Southland, selling it to China, plants to make urea from coal and syngas plants – all very very environmentally damaging, and suicidal on the carbon emissions front.

A somewhat uncertain statistic from UK Coal suggests that here we have a mere 400 million tonnes, but the reserves in Europe and worldwide are large.

As we build our renewables, putting up those thousands of turbines in the North Sea, investing millions, or billions, in wave and tidal systems, and subsidising the rooftop-owning half of the country to install solar photovoltaics, are we really replacing CO₂ emitting fuels, or are we just adding more generating capacity which will get absorbed by the future growth that’s so very important to our politicians?

It goes to the very heart of what Green politics are about, and where Green ideas differ from Socialist ones and the rest of the progressive left – growth is the problem, not the solution.

For me, those two messages – work for proportional representation, and remember that growth is not good – stood out. And hearing a pragmatic, inspirational politician who has a wealth of experience talk is a welcome tonic to all the political doom and gloom about. Now that she’s left parliament, I’m not sure what Jeanette will do next, but I am sure it will be at least as illustrious as what has gone before.

To me, Green philosophy starts with the fundamental ‘ecological’ idea that we humans are an intrinsic part of the eco-system, no more, or less, important than any other species. We do have a unique ability to modify it, which we need to be very careful about. Gilbert White’s detailed day to day observations of the environment around his parish of Selbourne at the end of the eighteenth century, were probably the first in English to start to see ecological systems as a whole, and the interdependence of organisms within them. He talks about trees, soils, births and deaths, rainfall, worms and all the minutiae of life.

The influence of EF Schumacher on Green thinking and the institutions he left us with can’t be underestimated. Small is Beautiful, and his ideas of appropriate technology and keeping economys to a scale that ordinary people can deal with underpins a lot of Green Party policy. In some ways, its problematic in an age of globalisation – the internet does a lot to promote localism but is a massive technology – but still very relevant. The charity he founded, Practical Action probably does more to promote sustainable societies than any green political movement ever has.
When I first came to the UK, it was the Schumacher Society which rekindled my interest in Green politics. The challenge Schumacher poses us in Britain today is how to apply his ideas at urban scales, and this is where many of the Briefings published by the Schumacher Society become useful. These are well-considered policy documents, looking at a range of issues – sustainable cities, democracy, carbon economics, health. They should be compulsory reading for anyone involved in forumulating Green Party policy.

And then there’s the deep ecology end of the spectrum, for which you should read Arne Naess’ Ecology, Community and Lifestyle. I’ve always been a bit uncertain about this – as a philosophy its attractive, but as a guide for living life in London today, or for political parties, its more difficult. Naess believes that a fundamental change in the way we think and act is needed to allow us to live within our environment, and that political parties are not the way to achieve that except in fairly singular circumstances as campaigning organisations (eg a party to campaign against nuclear power) and doesn’t think its useful in bipartisan systems like the US or, probably, the UK.

Jonathan Porritt’s Seeing Green is a British classic, and Caroline Lucas cites it as an early influence. On specific points its perhaps a little dated – I don’t know that many Greens would advocate coal as a transition fuel from oil and gas to renewables now – but worth a read.

I also mentioned Dryzek’s The Politics of the Earth, which I reviewed on here a few years ago. It looks at different ways of discussing environmental politics including descriptions of most of the major strands of Green (and not-so-green) though. Its real value is in showing ways of engaging with various constituencies on Green issues.

Jim – my copy of Small is Beautiful seems to have been recycled somewhere, but you’re welcome to borrow any of the others.

Three actors, Amanda Lawrence, Sean Campion and Will Mannering, using dance and spoken word, to explain what goes on in the mind of a gambler, and its not really about the winning. Gambling is sex, and the foreplay is a big part of the thrill, with the winning or losing as the climax. Lawrence almost mimes masturbation as she extracts coins from her cup of money to put them into the machine. The machine is a comfortable competitor, where everything is just right, and she dances with it, and is sure she’ll beat it.

The performance is only an hour long, and I left a little wiser, but wishing that they had taken extra time to explore some of the ideas further. Each of the characters could be a whole play in itself. It’s bright and flashy, with some insights, but, like gambling, a little hollow.

Gambling plays at the Soho Theatre until 10 April.

In the Almeida’s beautifully nuanced production, I finally get Isabella. Here, played by Anna Maxwell Martin, she’s strong and self-confident, but there is something damaged about her attitude to men. She argues forcefully with Angelo (Rory Kinnear), refuses to give in to him, but the body language is a little ambiguous. In telling her brother of her decision, and persuading him to accept it, she hugs him in a way that close enough to incestuous to be uncomfortable. Is she flirting with the Duke (Ben Miles)? In the end, when the Duke’s plot to deceive her is revealed, she’s not particularly happy to see her brother return from the dead, and her rejection of the Duke is scornful. This is clearly a woman who, for whatever reason, wants to get to her nunnery.

As Ben Miles said in the aftershow talkback, in Shakespeare, the characters always have the perfect words to express themselves, and one of the joys of this production is the extremely high quality of the speaking, from every actor. They are truly wonderful.

The Almeida theatre has very cheap restricted view seats (£8), behind narrow poles that you can easily see around. Even from E21, at the back of the circle, I had a reasonable view. It’s all sold out now, though there may be returns until it finishes on 10 April.

Paula Costain and Johanna Nutter as the two women present an hour of very disturbing theatre.  They talk, intensely and claustrophobically, and argue like children, tormenting each other until its hard to know what is real or if they even alive.  Even the half-expected denouement left me unsure.

Duplicity Girls is on transfer from Montreal, and only has one more date in London, at the White Bear on 22 Feb.  It’s well worth seeing.

As we came in, a writer is scribbling away on the floor, and the play begins with the parts being handed out to the players who study their lines.  We are occasionally drawn in to the making of the play, a device which works well in the intimate space with a stage that may be even smaller than the White Bear’s.  This isn’t a play where you’re in any danger of being forced to interact, but the audience is certainly part of the performance.

Then we’re off at a gallop.  Floriano kills a prince and flees to his friend Valerio, who hides him in the local asylum.  Meanwhile Erifila has eloped with her servant, Leonato, who steals her jewelry and abandons her to be found by Pisano, psychiatrist at the asylum, and taken there as a patient.  Fedra, niece of Sancho, the asylum owner, falls in love with Floriano as does her maid, Laida.  Valerio falls in love with Erifila, who also falls in love with Floriano.  Floriano falls in love with Erifila, while being terrified of being caught for murder.  I hope you’ve got all that.

The romp that ensues is a glorious farce, as the talented cast weave through misunderstanding and intrigue to an apparently unsatisfying ending, which is resolved in a way that had the entire theatre in stitches.

By the way, make sure you go back early in the interval to see the fragile fourth wall tumble as Laurence Piller’s leery psychiatrist Pisano, his own wits more than a little touched, ad-libs to the audience, seeking out tips for treatments and borrowing drinks.

Madness in Valencia plays at Trafalgar Studios 2 until 6 March, tickets 22.50.  Seat D4 was okay, but the first and second seats in any row would have a fairly restricted view, as would the last two.  Best to get the centre block if you can, but make sure you see it.

Nine young players of  Tough Theatre take on over a dozen characters in the tiny theatre space behind the White Bear pub on Kennington Park Road.  The floor is covered in straw, with signposts for each location and a few wooden boxes making up the set, which is reshaped by the cast between each scene.

The role of Husband, a man who has gambled away his family estate and blames all his own failings on his long-suffering wife, is played by Lachlan Nieboer, who is well worth watching out for.  He’s an unsympathetic character, narcissistic and unwilling to take any responsibility for his situation, who sees killing his family as a kindness, saving them from penury.  Even at the end, forgiven by his wife (Jacobean co-dependency, I think) and apparently repentant, its hard to have much regard for him.

The play shows us the motivation behind the crime, but its hard to know what to do with that insight.  What can be done about woman-hating self-absorbtion?

Charlotte Powell is the Wife, a woman who takes  ‘for better or worse’ a little too seriously.  She’s not deceiving herself – she knows what he is, and how badly he is treating her, has friends and lands of her own, but still stays with him to the very end, more loyal to him than even to her children.  And sadly that’s not an unusual story either.

Given the subject matter, its no surprise that the play is quite unrelenting, and I left the theatre feeling rung out.  When first published, the name William Shakespeare was on the cover, but that’s been fairly definitely discredited.  If nothing else, surely the Bard would have leavened it with a little humour or jollity?

This is not an easy play to watch, but it is well presented and challenging, and definitely worth seeing.  A Yorkshire Tragedy runs to 24 Jan at the White Bear Theatre.

As the play begins, two Oxford undergraduates have carried out a vicious murder simply to entertain themselves, and are making their friends unwitting extras to a Nietzchean nightmare.  We see intellectual arrogance untempered by compassion, set in the early 1920s as social butterflies flit over deep postwar grief.

Blake Ritson is a controlled, tense Wyndham Brandon, the ringleader of the pair, self-confident and without remorse.   At times, he’s so convincing he’s magnificantly hideous – you know he’s a monster but he almost leads you into his world.   His nemesis is Rupert Cadell, played by Bertie Carvel, in a subtle performance of a character who’s war experiences have scarred him, but added depth.

Alex Waldmann (Charles Granillo, the second murderer) seems to be everywhere lately, and is slowly growing on me.  His Sebastian in the Donmar’s start-studded Twelfth Night was fairly innocuous, and I’m embarrassed that I didn’t particularly register him in Hamlet.  He was very good in Shraddha at the Soho Theatre recently, and here gives us a bundle of nerves, who probably never really wanted to be involved but has past the point of no return.  Just as you think he’s going to explode, he calms down again, backwards and forwards, pumping up the tension.

As the play builds to its denouement  the tension becomes almost unbearable, with  Granillo quietly losing it behind a chair while Brandon and Cadell argue the value of life, murder and its punishment.  I don’t want to spoil it, but was relieved that my expected final twist did not arrive, and so society at least is redeemed.

Rope is staged in the round, though this adds little to the play and obstructs some sightlines.  It’s not a good idea to open the large lid of a chest, then do plot-explaining things behind it while hidden from 10-20% of the audience.  Seat E4 was certainly restricted view, and not in the normal Almeida sense of a 15cm pole which can easily be avoided.  Still, it was very cheap, so I’m not complaining.

Rope plays at the Almeida until 6 Feb 2010 and is well worth seeing.  Note that the seating configuration shown in their online booking isn’t what’s actually in the theatre for this production.  If you’re worried, it might be better to call the box office.