Lloyd Evans

She’s certainly a class act. But how did she manage it? Nina Raine, the 36-year-old writer-director, has established a formidable position in the British theatre. Her first play, Rabbit, opened at a pub venue in Islington in 2007. It transferred to New York and has since been performed all over the world. Last year she directed April de Angelis’s family comedy Jumpy at the Royal Court and the show has just transferred to the Duke of York’s in the West End. Yet, the way Raine tells it, her career has been nothing but a series of blunders and accidents. She left Oxford with an English degree and a few drama productions under her belt. ‘I thought about being an academic. For about five minutes. Both my parents are academics.

Richard III is seriously bad for your health. Any actor will tell you that the part of the ‘bunch-backed toad’ is so physically punishing that the chap in the title role usually ends up being injected with painkillers by the local quack before each show. Or he finds himself in hospital when he should be on stage. Mark Rylance has heeded these warnings. His Richard — an astonishing feat of creative originality — is very nearly able-bodied. He has no crutches, no twisted limbs, no bandy legs, no hump weighing him down like a medicine ball. He walks with a faint limp. He carries a withered arm discreetly under his doublet. And he has a slight suggestion of a cyst-ette on his shoulder. Otherwise, he’s perfectly formed.

No one knows quite why we go. It’s not for the whisky (which is like drinking liquefied peppercorns), or for the shortbread (like eating undercooked biscuit-mix), or for the weather (like walking through a car-wash). Nor does the moaning falsetto of the bagpipes draw us north. But every year, without fail, the London media colony sets off for the Scottish capital to watch a gang of wackos and wannabes (mostly from the London media colony) making a bid for fame and glory. This is my tenth visit and here are my tips for maximising the fun. Big question first. How to avoid being engulfed in an avalanche of pretentious tripe put on by waffling preeners and self-adoring garbage-smiths? That’s easy. Don’t see anything at the International Festival (9 August to 2 September).

A timely show at the Finborough takes us into the heart of Bashar al-Assad’s terror state. Zoe Lafferty’s verbatim piece gathers evidence from activists and torture victims and flings it straight at us. The result is utterly gruesome and utterly compelling. A fractured, blood-stained snapshot of an ancient monstrosity blundering towards its own funeral. Syria, a Russian sidekick state, still pursues the traditions of Marxist totalitarianism. Every morning, ranks of schoolkids salute their leader. ‘Unity, Freedom, Socialism’ they chant in honour of a regime which traduces all three ideals. The Alawi minority, making up 12 per cent of the population, controls everything. Western music and literature are ruthlessly censored.

OK, I was wrong. I’ve said it a million times but I now realise it’s perfectly feasible. Antique dramas can make sense in a modern location. Nicholas Hytner sets Timon of Athens slap bang in the middle of present-day London. The action begins in a mock-up of the National Gallery’s Sainsbury wing, complete with that dull, forbidding grey hue that some miserable nutcase chose for the walls. Ominously, hanging centre-stage, is El Greco’s swirly pink vision of Christ ejecting the moneylenders from the temple. A launch party is in full swing. Champagne flows. A gang of yuppies, toadies, spivs and freeloaders has gathered to toast the opening of the ‘Timon Wing’. Glamorous sycophants hover around the millionaire philanthropist crying, ‘Timon, Timon!

Michael Frayn is a schizophrenic. His creative personality bestrides the English Channel. When he’s at home he writes traditional West End farces with amusing titles and plenty of jokes. When he sits at his European desk he comes up with dour, static, talk-heavy historical dramas with boring titles and no jokes at all. Democracy, written in 2003, is a classic Euro-bureau production. Frayn invites us to examine Willy Brandt’s stewardship of West Germany in the early 1970s. Willy is referred to throughout as ‘Villy’ which, for some reason, sounds even more silly than just Willy. Chancellor Villy has a couple of problems. He’s an idealist and he wants the free world to embrace the eastern bloc and to give the misunderstood Soviets a big, warm, sloppy hug.

Fear is a new drama by Dominic Savage and it’s one of the nastiest plays I’ve ever seen. It’s also one of the most scrappily written. Yet the subject matter and the clunky script make it weirdly captivating. We meet a pair of teenage muggers who hang around posh bits of London scoping out victims and totting up their ‘net worth’. A typical yuppie banker sports about five grand’s worth of portable accessories: Swiss watch, smart phone, designer briefcase, bespoke shoes, wallet full of cash. And these two muggers are expert valuers of lucrative prey. When they strike, they seek more than just upmarket goods. They want revenge as well.

Off to Narnia. Director Rupert Goold has recreated C.S. Lewis’s permafrosted fantasy world in a circus tent moored in Kensington Gardens. And at the height of summer too. An impossible feat. But tons of cash, and many months of preparation, have been sunk into this effort. The show starts with The Wardrobe looming up in the middle of the stage, like a fat slab of mystery, a sort of Tardis perhaps, or the Kaaba at Mecca. Not much like a wardrobe, though. A child steps out and finds herself in a freaky kingdom run by a demented tundra-monger. Here she comes. Sally Dexter, playing the queen in a luminous white bedsheet, cackles sexily and yells commands at her cowering minions. Then she whooshes off in a great surge of whip cracks and dry ice. ‘Was that a bit scary?