The Norman Conquests, The Old Vic, Swan Lake, Royal Opera House, The Walworth Farce, The National Theatre (1)

The Norman Conquests

Rating: 4/5

Where: The Old Vic

When: To 20 Dec

HYSTERICALLY funny it might be, but Alan Ayckbourn’s classic 70s trilogy has dated like an avocado bathroom suite, so kudos  to director Matthew Warchus for keeping this production firmly in that timeline.

To pick one play at random – they’re all perfect farces, showing the same story from a new angle – Table Manners gives us a disastrous weekend in the country during which three siblings and their other halves battle with infidelity, stupidity and home-made wine.

Two spectacular performances shine like comic gold. Green Wing’s Stephen Mangan (right) is superb as “gigolo in a haystack” Norman, whose plans for a dirty weekend with his beleaguered sister-in-law Annie (Jessica Hynes) are foiled by his other, enviously monstrous, sister-in-law Sarah (Amanda Root channelling Prunella Scales), who’d like a bit of Norman for herself.

Coupling’s Ben Miles is unrecognisable as the greying, diffident neighbour Tom, who has spent three years failing to pop the question to Annie and being walked over by everyone else.

It’s bitchy, witty and utterly fantastic. If you can see all three, so much the better.

Kat Brown

Swan Lake

Rating: 4/5

Where: Royal Opera House

When: To 25 October

Sir Anthony Dowell’s production of Tchaikovsky’s classic shows no sign of wilting after 21 years as it opens a new season at Covent Garden.

Led by principals Thiago Soares and Marianela Nunez (Carlos Acosta is also part of a rotating lead cast), the ­dancing is near perfect, even if Yolanda Sonnabend’s heavily Russia-themed designs begin a little overwrought – the opening party a queasy swill of ochres and fairly hideous bling.

But the lakeside scenes come as near to perfection as you can expect, as a gossamer-thin curtain lifts on the wintry stillness, so evocative that it is as if you can see the dancers’ breath. The mirrors of the lake are subtly evoked in the penultimate scene in the palace as Siegfried gets undone by the evil Von Rothbart before he is finally reunited with Odile.

As a moving, serene and ­uplifting ­evocation of the power of love, Swan Lake, when ­performed and crafted as well as this, is hard to beat.

Ben Dowell

The Walworth Farce

Rating: 2/5

Where: National Theatre

When: To 29 November

Two hours is long enough in the company of Dinny and his adult sons Sean and Blake in a grotty flat on the Walworth Road as they enact, for the umpteenth time, their Dad’s fantasy version of why he left their mother and County Cork. Their mental disintegration is mirrored by the yellow grease and old Cornflakes packs, and Dinny is a brutal master of ceremonies. It’s depressing, very one-note, with a melodramatic ending.

This is an overrated 2007 Edinburgh hit stretched to run in the kind of prestigious venue that neither Enda Walsh’s writing nor Mikel Murfi’s directing ever quite deserves.

BD

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