I liked the visible positioning of the band at stage right and the sound (designed by Nick Hall) is dynamic and effective. There are also some evocative lighting effects thanks to John Moore’s design.

Rent is an ensemble piece and one of the few commendable things to emerge from Jonathan Larson’s book, music and lyrics is the number of opportunities for individuals to emerge from the ranks for solo spots. The choral singing is slick and tight especially in Will I Lose My Dignity? The use of sung telephone calls on an upstage scaffold balcony is quite fun too although it’s a bit overdone.

Amongst the principals there’s an outstanding, show-stopping performance from Laura Saunders as Maureen. Her account of drinking milk direct from a cow’s udder is quite a moment. Emma Vieceli gives a convincing performance as her girlfriend, the Harvard-educated Joanne. The two are complete contrast and they play well off each other. Kevin Bell brings plenty of musical gravitas to Collins and Lucy Farrow is strong as the dying Mimi.

Yes, there’s plenty to admire here but overall, as a piece of theatre, it’s a disappointing experience. At the matinee performance I saw The Great Hall at The Leys was barely a quarter full. I hope very sincerely that they attracted better houses for other performances or maybe the regular local Cambridge Theatre Company audience knew more about Rent than I did.

I have high hopes, however, for Chicago and Hairspray later in the year because both are fine shows and CTC has the potential to do something very enjoyable with them.

★★★

Good as the best selling novel (by Louis de Bernieres) that this show is based on is, it is off-puttingly slow to get going. Melly Still’s production has the same problem. Theatre needs immediate impact and this show lacks it. The first half feels a lot longer than an hour and the whole piece is lengthily drawn out.

The story telling needs to be clearer too. Famously, it’s a second world war love story about a doctor’s daughter on a remote island and a musical Italian Captain, part of an invading army, who is billeted in their house. The background politics are complicated, messy and appalling for the Greeks but this interpretation struggles to demonstrate with clarity just who is fighting whom and where and why.

But there are some delightful things here too. Mayou Trikerioti’s set is magnificent. The stage is dominated by what appears to be two overlapping giant squares of crumpled tin foil. This then becomes a projection screen during conflict scenes – lots of loud flashes – and with Malcolm Rippeth’s evocative lighting it coveys the beauty of Greece in all its moods.

The music is well used too. It’s a play that abounds in music rather than a musical. Alex Mugnaioni is a convincing and suitably charismatic mandolin player and the male ensemble sing several opera numbers enjoyably as the army choir formed by the eponymous captain.

I liked Madison Clare’s work as feisty Pelagia who knows almost as much medicine as her father and scoots about the stage with lots of presence. She has a rather attractive gravelly catch in her voice which might irritate some but it reminds me of the young Judi Dench. Joseph Long is strong as the irascible but kindly doctor and Eve Polycarpou has gravitas, humour and a rich singing voices as Pelagia’s would-be mother-in-law who delivers some lovely traditional-style laments.

There is also an outstanding performance from Luisa Guerreiro as Pelgia’s goat. She is Cirque du Soleil trained and it shows as she uses all her physical theatre skills to convey a totally believable caprine personality. She chews, bleats, freezes, whizzes about on foreleg stilts and, delightfully, keeps nicking things like pieces of paper.

★★★★★

Since its first appearance at Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park two years ago, this show has done a season in New York as well as being revived last year in the Park. Now it has moved indoors at the Barbican. It’s been a fine production all along. Now it is stonkingly good.

For a start it has adapted beautifully to Barbican Theatre’s big wide playing space with the thirteen-piece band clearly visible on two platforms above. The atmosphere is electrifying from the first raw, twangy guitar tune, played by a single, hooded player who steps forward at the beginning of the overture. And what a good idea to open the auditorium side doors so that we could see the cast bounding down the steps in the light towards the stage when they first appear.

There are a number of star features in this show. Top of the list is Drew McOnie’s sharp, energetic choreography which has the cast pulsing in arrestingly rhythmic shapes – very much a case of What’s the Buzz? Each and every cast member is a skilled dancer and I have rarely seen ensemble work so tight.

Also highly impressive is the sparkling quality of the playing and band sound. Not only do Tom Deering (musical supervisor) and Ed Bussey (Musical Director) get a magnificent sound out of every player but the sound designer (Nick Lidster) has balanced it splendidly with great attention to detail. I’ve known this music for nearly half a century and I’ve seen the show at least eight times in various incarnations but there are elements in this version – especially from keys – which I haven’t noticed before and they are delightful.

Robert Tripolino is a truly charismatic Jesus – gentle, determined and unbowed. How on earth he manages to follow those anguished shrieks with sweet controlled tenor singing, perfectly in tune and beautifully controlled, I have no idea. It’s a terrific performance.

Ricardo Afonso gets all the right angst as Judas, Sallay Garnett is a gentle, attractive Mary who delivers her famous show stopping I Don’t Know How to Love Him with warmth and panache and Samuel Buttery is fun as the mocking, excessive Herod – gift of a cameo. I couldn’t always hear Cavin Cornwall’s words as Caiaphas but it’s a very minor gripe and he looks good in the role.

Then there’s the ending. Jesus Christ Superstar is described as a “rock opera” and the final five munutes, as played here, are worthy of any opera house in the world as the orchestra plays the final plangent, evocative, moving melody.

Definitely a show not to be missed.

Of course the set is simple – just a blue backdrop for Theseus’s palace and a couple of modern painted trees for the forest so we’re dependent on strong story telling, clear verse speaking and good acting – and that’s what we get in abundance. Director Dean Laccohee (who played Richard III last year) knows exactly how to get the best from every single cast member.

It’s a modern dress concept so we start with Richard Sockett as a larger-than-life urbane, happy, authoritative Trump-esque king, about to be married, striding confidently though the audience in a white suit. Sockett is effortlessly convincing during Pyramus and Thisbe too. The play loses some of its sense of shared dream if you don’t double Theseus/Oberon and Hypolita/Titania but I can see why, with an amateur company and a large pool of actors to cast you might choose not to. And Reuben Milne is splendid as anarchic, charismatic Oberon whose rapport with Louise West’s Puck is delightful especially when they share popcorn and argue in mime upstage behind the lovers’ quarrel.

West who uses a bike, is perky, insouciant and full of mischief and glee. It’s a lovely take on the role. Among other well balanced performances, Richard Brown as Quince is anxious, long-suffering and self-consciously theatrical. James Rowe finds lots of range in Bottom and Ashton Cull’s Snout gives us the funniest Wall in Pyramus and Thisbe that I have ever seen – it’s all in the pained look on his face and in his timing.

This was my second Dream in 24 hours. It is completely different from Open Air Theatre Regent’s Park but on its own terms works equally well. Congratulations, SATG. I look forward to Twelfth Nightnext year.

★★★

So how, exactly, do you depict a fairy in 2019? Not, for sure, like a traditional Victorian Christmas decoration. Designer Rachael Channing’s dark fairies are clickily sinister on menacing stilts with strange, spiky dendrological headpieces. You definitely wouldn’t want to meet them on a dark night, which is, of course, exactly what happens to the four lovers (in pyjamas on this occasion) during their long-shared erotic dream in the wood.

The tree-like fairy concept is one of several things which distinguish Open Air Theatre’s first production of this play for seven years. The evocative “scary” sound track (Paddy Cunneen), often enhanced by Tomi Ogbaro on onstage double bass, is effective too. The whole cast bergomask after Pyramus and Thisbe is a choreographical, sharply angular delight (Emily-Jane Boyle) and I admired the puppeted changeling child and the huge illuminated ring which dominates the set and forms Titania’s bed.

There’s also some fine acting. Remy Beasley is outstanding as Helena. She squeezes every nuance of pathos, passion and absurdity out of the role with terrific panache, making her character much more interesting than she usually is. Susan Wokoma’s Bottom is a joy too too – earnest, funny and feisty. As Theseus/Oberon Kieran Hill has authority worn lightly. It isn’t an easy balance but his is a nicely judged performance. I was less comfortable with Myra McFayden’s diminutive, androgynous Puck played as a Glaswegian comic. She does it well enough but as an interpretation I found it grating.

I wish, too, that director Dominic Hill hadn’t succumbed to the temptation to overegg the pudding. This production includes too much gratuitous fussiness such a completely unnecessary, distracting puppeted Cupid to illustrate Oberon’s instruction to Puck and why, when Oberon is anointing Titania’s eyes does he suddenly morph into a giant spider? We really don’t need animal noises to enhance the list of creatures Oberon wants Titania to fall in love with either.

★★★★

Sardines, anyone?!

Well I’m happy to report that this publication’s signature show is in competent hands – back at the Lyric Hammersmith where it premiered 37 years ago. Surreal plates of sardines, of course, abound for no apparent reason and the whole thing purrs along hilariously. It’s a timeless classic, often revived, although I haven’t seen it since 2004 at the Piccadilly Theatre, when it was directed by Jeremy Sams.

The play succeeds, as always, because it’s so beautifully observed. Anyone who’s ever been in a rehearsal room immediately recognises every cast member as they struggle to sort out their production of the farce, Nothing On – the flighty one, the useless one, the pretentious one, the boozer, the one who tries to sooth everyone else and so on. Yes, they’re exaggerated but not much. It’s theatrical self-mockery at its best.

Meera Syal is in fine form as Dotty (by name and by nature) scuttling about as the housekeeper who forgets line, muddles props and has a dreadful cod “vernacular” accent. It’s not a million miles from her TV role in The Kumars at No 42 but she does it well.

Noises Off is actually a farce within a farce in which all the main characters play both themselves and themselves being actors. It can succeed only when the cast work really tightly together as they do here especially in the middle act which is nearly all mime as the action unrolls behind the set – very physical, very funny and very effective under Jeremy Herrin’s direction.

Within the inner farce Daniel Rigby – urbane, slippery and randy estate agent played by Garry Lejeune – impresses and creates a nice contrast with Jonathan Cullen’s misfortune-prone house owner Jonathan Fellowes. Simon Rouse is engaging as the dypso actor who is usually missing and Belinda Blair and Amy Morgan present two contrasting female characters. The balance is pleasingly judged.

Lloyd Owen’s work as the hapless, useless, self-absorbed director provides plenty of gravel in the mix and bravo Eny Okoronkwo and Lois Chimimba in the slightly more minor backstage roles. Both have a lovely sense of dead pan comic timing and the sort of angst farce calls for as it becomes ever more absurd and manic.

I saw this production on a day when, for personal reasons, I was in desperate need of light relief. I got it in spades.

★★★

There’s a lot to admire in this edgy, topical Hamlet played as a promenade performance, mostly in the open air, by a nifty ensemble of just seven actors.

First there’s the quality of the acting. Jenet Le Lacheur gives us a rangy, quite masculine female Hamlet. Le Lacheur is a transgender actor who creates something very interesting out of the relationship with Harold Addo’s excellent Horatio. If Hamlet is actually in love with Horatio, and he with her, then it explains quite neatly why the relationship with Ophelia (Jenny Horsthuis) is so fragile. Le Lacheur is an outstanding actor who manages to make the soliloquies sound as fresh and spontaneous as if she’s making them up as she goes along.

Addo has one of the most expressive faces I’ve seen in an actor for quite a time – he can communicate volumes just with the whites of his eyes and the tiniest twitch of his face muscles. Horsthuis is impressively versatile – hooded as Ophelia with a moving mad scene, nonchalant as Bernado, swaggering as Guildenstern and magisterial as the priest figure at the end. Paula James gives us a well observed, revoltingly sycophantic Polonius in public who is brutal to her own children behind the scenes and then a very funny gravedigger: good comedy out of some stage business with her assistant’s packed lunch.

The promenade format is one of Iris Theatre’s USPs. And although I thought the need for the audience to keep moving made the action seem a bit fractured in this production, it is a stroke of directorial genius (Daniel Winder) to move the action inside the church for the players’ scene just before the interval. It uses film as well as actors and it works a treat especially the energetic dancing as we file in. We are back in the church at the end of the play for the fatal fencing scene by which time it’s dark outside and, with red lamps the whole atmosphere is sinister and mysterious.

One advantage of shifting the action round the gardens is that actors can – and do – use every inch of the space often entering through the audience from the back and positioning some of the work on paths or steps. It makes it feel both intimate and immersive. And I liked the use of screens and phones because this is a Hamlet for today and the political speeches, laden with spin, from both Claudius and, eventually Fortinbras feel deeply familiar – politicians have changed very little over the centuries. Nice touch to link those speeches with music – Elgar and Parry – which has acquired nationalistic connotations too.

It’s an incisive version of the play running two and three quarter hours with interval and it tells the story with great clarity. There are, however, things in the editing of the text which grate. Addressing Hamlet as “My Lady” for instance does not fit the verse. In fact verse speaking is not a priority in this production in which everything sounds naturalistic and prosey and – I’m afraid in some cases gabbled. And Horatio’s line which substitutes the word “love” for “prince” in the last few moments simply sounds like a wrong note.

It’s a pity too that Iris theatre always has to compete with the amplified street entertainers and people cheering them on the Covent Garden piazza outside. Occasionally it creates real audibility problems.

This Sweet Charity – such a good choice for students because there are so many terrific cameo roles – fizzes with slick energy. And nothing is laboured. The lift scene which ends Act One and opens Act Two is simply and effectively depicted in a gap between the nearly closed curtains. Some cabaret-style audience seating at the front effortlessly evokes the Fandango Dance Hall.

At the centre of it all, of course, is the eponymous Charity, seedy dance hall hostess and probably part-time hooker, is feisty, rueful and “sweet”. And she’d desperately like a different, better life. May Tether, who alternates the role with Elsa-Grace Waterfield across the four performances, gives a stonking performance. She has a richly resonant singing voice, oodles of stage presence and is a very compelling naturalistic actor. Watch out for her. There were a number of agents present at the performance I saw. I should think they’re climbing over each other to sign her if one of them hasn’t already done so.

James Dodd (Chesney Fawkes-Porter at other performances) is suitably geeky as Oscar and he sings well. And Ejiro Richmond is splendid as Daddy – fluid of movement, evangelical in manner and very funny – in the deliciously cynical Rhythm of Life scene.

Steven Harris’s choreography and the outstanding ensemble work are, in many ways, what really drives this show and makes it shine. The Act 1 whole ensemble number in the dance hall is a high spot. The music is very percussive and every body movement – lots of neck work – mirrors it as sub groups within the ensemble respond to each other. It’s like visual music and very watchable. The Rhythm of Life choreography is excellent too as the cast wriggle and stretch like languorous waves.

This was my first visit, incidentally, to Blackheath Halls since the radical renovation of the Great Hall last year. It is now a very fine, spacious comfortable venue with raked seating, a big playing area and lots of tech. Hurrah.