WORLD MUSIC

HIGHLIGHT

won him multiple awards, Will Pound is joined by the accordionist Eddy Jay for a dynamic set of ear-expanding tunes. Lambert led the Quebecois group La Bottine Souriante between 1976 and 2003, and now tours with the trio he put together in 2010, featuring fiddler Tommy Gauthier and guitarist Olivier Rondeau. One of the biggest stars in world music today, the Portuguese singer and

contemporary voice of fado released her latest album, ‘Mundo’, last autumn – her first in five years – and this is her only UK date until early June, when she will perform in Cardiff as part of the city’s Festival of

Voice. writing, directed tautly by James Macdonald, wrongfoots us as it takes us inside Andre’s mind: a clever move, but also empathetic and moving. An affectionate sprint through the life of Beryl Burton, the great British cyclist, written by Maxine Peake. Samantha Power stars as the Yorkshire housewife who bankrolled her passion for cycling out of her husband Charlie’s pay packet and rode to races on her own bike. In Rebecca Gatward’s fine production, a four-strong cast employ entertaining stagecraft to enliven a good-natured piece that in less assured hands might have descended into a pofaced hagiography. clarity of thought and depth of characterisation. Among the ennui-stricken lovers languishing on a country estate, Paul Rhys treads a tragicomic knife edge as the newly named Johnny (not Vanya), while the lovelorn Sonya is played with tenderness by Jessica Brown Findlay. Vanessa Kirby is languorous and radiant as Elena, while Tobias Menzies is a fine-grained, standout as the doctor. This is a production as clear and fresh as a draught of water. Matthew Warchus directs the most artistically searching production of his Old Vic tenure thus far in his Ibsen revival. Ibsen’s ferociously unflattering selfportrait of the artist as an ageing man gives Ralph Fiennes the opportunity to surpass himself and elicits from David Hare an adaptation that has an incisive clarity and wit in its keen, empathetic understanding of where the piece is coming from. Sarah Snook is disarmingly direct as Hilde. David Wood’s appealing stage adaptation of the 1981 children’s classic by Michelle Magorian is a family show with emotional depth and staying power. David Troughton is splendid as the irritable widower jolted out of his ways by a waifish evacuee at the start of the Second World War. The production is full of delightful humour and heartwarming touches, and the tear-jerking glow of the conclusion feels earned. Sam Yates’s sophisticated production rises to the drama’s complex occasion in a version that takes advantage of the venue’s candlelit intimacy. An engaging cast expedite Yates’s poetically supple and humane vision of the piece’s transitions between ingredients: tragicomedy, romance, history play, pantomime. Emily Barber is an admirably unsoppy Innogen, Jonjo O’Neill a sardonic, slightly melancholic Posthumus. Daphna’s “uberJewishness” draw blood. Shrewdly, Harmon’s play shows how strangely alike they are. Wallace Shawn’s balefully hilarious play inspects the least lovely presumptions that underwrite the US’s stance towards its poor and its idea of its role as an international peacekeeper. Shawn is quietly excruciating as a former TV star taking refuge at what was a watering hole for creatives. Ian Rickson directs with a feel for shifting tone as delicious satiric overkill mounts. This deeply attuned evening presents three of DH Lawrence’s stage masterpieces about East Midlands coal miners as a composite drama. Ben Power interleaves the scripts sensitively; Marianne Elliott directs musically; AnneMarie Duff is heartwringing as a trapped wife. Mike Bartlett’s bracingly provocative play is a thoughtful, speculative drama about the future of the monarchy, beginning with the funeral of the present queen. In Rupert Goold’s pitch-perfect production, Robert Powell plays Charles III as a flawed idealist.