The week in theatre: The Constituent; Kyoto; Mean Girls – review

The Constituent had so much going for it. Thirteen years ago, James Corden tugged the massive One Man, Two Guvnors across the National’s stage as easily as a child pulling a toy boat; now he returns to the theatre alongside the infinitely subtle Anna Maxwell Martin . Playwright Joe Penhall proved in Blue/Orange (2000) that he can make an intimate encounter resound with social and personal tension. He has now lit on essential subjects in the confrontation between a conscientious, besieged female MP and a troubled ex-soldier who is installing an alarm system in her office. Jo Cox’s murder has been mentioned in connection with the play. Two days before press night, the windows of MP Stella Creasy’s headquarters were smashed by a hooded man with a hammer .

Related: Racist taunts, rape threats and murder: Joe Penhall on his play about rage against MPs

Yet despite the urgent core, Matthew Warchus’s production only pads across the stage. Drama is signalled between scenes by blasts of the Smiths and Billy Bragg but is more declared than evident. The dialogue is heavy with explanation and the action slowed by overload: not only the threats to female MPs, not only the difficulties of being an often absent parent; Corden’s character, unsupported by underfinanced social services, suffers from the breakdown of his marriage, memories of Afghanistan and being bullied as a whistleblower.

Though convincing when inflicting a shockingly violent assault, Zachary Hart can do little to inflect the behaviour of a demonised police officer. Maxwell Martin has an exceptional ability of gathering the audience (here seated confrontationally in two blocks facing each other across the stage) to her, but her meticulous tact could do with more grit and brio. Strolling on in big shorts, pencil behind ear (were he to whistle, he would be the archetypal British workman), Corden begins apparently complacent, moves through disturbance and threat, ends with a terrible unravelling. This is a breakthrough for him: it shows what a versatile actor he is.

It is a long time since audiences went to the RSC for news. Yet Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey ’s theatre is, alongside its Shakespeare productions, aiming to look directly at the modern world – with a Shakespearean lens. Joes Murphy and Robertson, who in 2017 created the morally certain, emotionally charged The Jungle , reunite with directors Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin to make a whirligig show about the climate crisis, based on the conferences that culminated in the Kyoto protocol of 1997 .

Demonstrating that this is no Cop-out from the “S” in RSC, Kyoto has a snippet from the mighty weather speech in A Midsummer Night’s Dream , when Miriam Buether’s beige corporate design offers a glimpse of tangled greenery. Still, the main action recreates the babel and jumble of negotiation: hopes, desperation, conflicting national ambition. Disagreement seems insurmountable and vast but clauses are shredded with an exactness worthy of a professor of logic.

The arbitrary nature of agreement – chairman Raúl Estrada-Oyuela pounds articles through as if hypnotising delegates with his gavel – is almost as dismaying as the venality of national interest and the rigging of debate by oil companies. What finally brings delegates together is pride, in the face of which principle evaporates. What people will remember, Estrada-Oyuela tells the warring factions, is that a compromise agreement was reached, not what the compromise was. Kyoto’s real subject is negotiation.

In this expostulating production delegates pop up like political cartoons: Angela Merkel cuts off dissent using her hands like blades. Yet they glide from cliche to surprise. The Japanese delegate uses cherry blossom to describe micro-climates. John Prescott – puffed-out chest and desperate for lunch – proves a formidable advocate of “diplomacy by exhaustion”. In a fine, acerbic move, the action is focused through Don Pearlman, a Republican lawyer in the pay of oil companies; a climate crisis denier who is – well – slick. Sinuously played by Stephen Kunken, he ends up with a disintegrated spine and lungs full of smoke. Like the world to come.

“Wide-set vagina!” rose the whisper from the stalls. Audiences arrive at Mean Girls primed with the catchphrases of the 2004 movie . They get a bonus. What could be a better argument for a show that sets itself against girly conformists (body-obsessed bullies dubbed “the Plastics”)?

This is the 1950s musical turned inside out. Letting women know they don’t have to be decorative or have a chap in tow; letting chaps know they don’t have to be jocks – the fellows muscling around with heave-ho shoulders look more strenuous than imposing.

Who would have thought the heroine of a West End show would declare: ‘I love calculus’?

Not that this is an attempt to weird-up the genre: it is a friendly, popular show, whipped along with video designs by Finn Ross and Adam Young offering all-over pink walls, lavatory tiles, bursts of stars bearing George Michael’s face.

Jeff Richmond’s music thrums along with no standout marvel: it is an efficient travelator for Nell Benjamin’s lyrics and Tina Fey’s book, which celebrate having a curious brain, refusing to fit in. Who would have thought the heroine of a West End show would declare: “I love calculus”?

Charlie Burn sings sweetly as the girl who turns plastic when she copies Regina, the queen of spite (Georgina Castle spindles in gold glitter), at her new school. Elèna Gyasi and Grace Mouat are comically appealing as Regina’s ditsy clones. Still, the knockouts are the two gay authentics who are in charge of the narrative. Elena Skye is focused, spiky, crisp. Tom Xander gracefully and wittily makes his languorous wrists and hips contradict what he is singing. He is something rare: extraordinarily lovable. Fetch. Indeed, grool.

Star ratings (out of five)
The Constituent ★★★
Kyoto ★★★★
Mean Girls ★★★★

• The Constituent is at the Old Vic, London, until 10 August

• Kyoto is at the Swan theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until 13 July

• Mean Girls is at the Savoy theatre, London, booking until 16 February 2025