More theatre reviews and previews

Great Britain, National Theatre (Lyttelton), London

Talk about media secrecy …Astoundingly, without word getting out, the National Theatre has managed to rehearse a new play about phone hacking in the tabloid press, and one that stars Billie Piper, no less.

It finally released information about the show less than a week before its opening, once the verdicts in the News International hacking trials had been handed down and the matter was no longer sub judice. Piper plays a circulation-hungry editor in what’s not quite a rapid-response piece by Richard Bean but one that director Nicholas Hytner has already turned into a major media coup for his final months at the National. IS

nationaltheatre.org.uk, 020 7452 3000, from Monday to August 23

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Julius Caesar, Shakespeare’s Globe, London

With Titus Andronicus and Antony and Cleopatra already up and running, the Globe is scrutinising Rome this summer – and the uses and abuses of power. Here Dominic Dromgoole directs Shakespeare’s great play about regime change.

Caesar has become too powerful: Brutus and his fellow republicans decide that he has become a danger and that he must go. But what will happen after the assassination? It’s a work that, sadly, never seems out of date – all the more topical, given recent upheavals in the Middle East. George Irving plays Caesar, Tom McKay Brutus and Luke Thompson Mark Antony. SH

shakespearesglobe.com , 020 7401 9919, to October 11

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The Crucible, Old Vic, London

A stunning, stylised production of A View from the Bridge recently closed at the Young Vic, which now stages more reimagined Arthur Miller with Yaël Farber’s visceral new staging of The Crucible.

Farber was last in London with Mies Julie, her striking, physical version of Strindberg’s classic, relocated to South Africa. Her new production of Miller’s timeless play about hysteria and persecution stars Richard Armitage as John Proctor, a man caught up in the horrifying momentum of a witch hunt. SH

oldvictheatre.com, 0844 8717628, to September 13

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Dead Dog in a Suitcase, Everyman, Liverpool

The irrepressible Kneehigh theatre company opens its latest show in Liverpool, before touring. The title may not tempt everyone but this is, in fact, a new version of John Gay’s 18th-century musical satire The Beggar’s Opera (which inspired Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera).

The latest spin on the tale of bad boy Macheath and his sweetheart Polly Peachum comes from the pen of Carl Grose. Mike Shepherd directs the mayhem. SH

www.everymanplayhouse.com, 0151 709 4776, to July 12

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Hobson’s Choice, Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park, London

It’s easy to see Salford bootmaker Harold Hobson as a rumbustious rough diamond rather than a brutal domestic tyrant in this 1880-set comedy. Director Nadia Fall and actor Mark Benton brilliantly square the circle in this revival, updated to the 1960s. Better still, Fall succeeds in turning this into the story of Hobson’s eldest daughter Maggie (a wonderful performance by Jodie McNee) getting free of both Hobson’s household and her own flinty nature.

All this with the comedy intact. It makes you want to join in the Gerry and the Pacemakers song that resounds through the production: “How Do You Do It?” IS

openairtheatre.com, 0844 826 4242, to July 12

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The Art of Dying, Royal Court (upstairs), London

Nick Payne, the playwright who wrote the extraordinarily daring Constellations, tackles the taboo subject of death and our attitudes to dying and talking about it. Payne also performs the solo work, directed by Michael Longhurst, which is a mixture of fiction and fact. SH

royalcourttheatre.com, 020 7565 5000, July 1-12

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Beryl, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds

Actress Maxine Peake makes her stage debut as a playwright with an adaptation of her 2012 radio play about Beryl Burton. In 1954 Beryl met cyclist Charlie Burton – and fell in love with both him and the sport. She went on to extraordinary sporting success but never went on to be the sort of celebrity she might have become today. Peake’s play tells her story. SH

wyp.org.uk, 0113 213 7700, June 30 to July 19

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Forbidden, Broadway, Menier Chocolate Factory, London

If you’ve missed out on recent big musicals, here is a chance to catch up on several of them at once. The spoof Broadway musical revue returns, updated now to include Book of Mormon, Once, Matilda, Miss Saigon and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Philip George directs. SH

menierchocolatefactory.com, 020 7378 1713, to August 16