There are two main ingredients here: the war between Oedipus’ sons articulated with a com- pelling vehemence by this cast -

There are two main ingredients here: the war between Oedipus’ sons, articulated with a com- pelling vehemence by this cast – and the chorus of Phoenician Women.A surprising group, with a preponderance of Northern accents, they’ve travelled from Lebanon to Thebes. They cling to their rituals with the same fervour with which they hang on to their dusty suitcases. They dance, swirl and jog round the stage: breaking into Balkan chants and conjuring up musical rhythms by drumming the floor, pounding their chests or – with weird effectiveness – running pestles round the rims of brass bowls.We witness what the Phoenician women witness: the outraged Polyneices (Dermot Kerrigan) takes on his power-mad brother Eteocles (Sean Murray) in a futile struggle. Creon (Michael Gould) hugs the legs of craggy old Teiresias (Peter Copley, looking two to three times the age of the others) and prays that the prophecy about his son’s death isn’t true.

Oedipus (Antony Byrne) runs his hands over the dead bodies of Jocasta and their two sons and asks: “Three gone together?” These events ripple out. The Phoenician women act as the echo chamber.Mitchell’s wonderfully spare production means that, in David Thompson’s translation, Euripides emerges as much a war correspondent as a poet:”It was a massacre. Men cut down and dying,Slumped across chariot-rails, wheels bucking,Leaping, axle piled on axle, mounds of dead – “There’s an urgent simplicity here, as if we’re hearing a bulletin from the frontline, but Mitchell’s production is richly textured. She blends Claire Hughes’s music with a subliminal backing track (by Andrea J Cox): mosquitoes murmur, armies clash, dogs bark It never distracts but constantly shapes the mood.

Mitchell draws out impassioned performances that involve us fully in the characters, without reducing them to anything petty or domestic It’s a superb production. Who needs to be shown images of Bosnia? In Mitchell’s hands, it is hard to imagine a more contemporary writer than Euripides.In the final number of Jolson, Brian Conley falls to his knees, stretches out his palms and belts out “My Mammy” with an irresistible shamelessness It’s been a huge evening for Conley. This is a West End musical that more than matches the size of Al Jolson’s ego, and although there is excellent support from the radiant Sally Ann Triplett as Jolson’s second wife, the show is Conley’s. He does 19 of the 32 songs and when he isn’t singing, he’s quarrelling with agents, wives, pianists and producers. As Conley sinks to the floor, the first- night audience – yes, Rolf Harris, Jim Davidson, Bob Monkhouse, the lot – rose to its shiny feet. Fireworks went off, balloons floated down and and usherettes handed round champagne. Euripides, this wasn’t: but in the era of the blockbuster through-sung musical, it’s great fun to find a backstage musical produced with this lavish exuberance.

It reclaims a chunk of the West End from Lloyd Webber.Within the conventions of the genre Jolson works well. As you’d expect with a bio-musical about a great American entertainer whose mother died when he was nine, My Mammy turns out to be a pivotal figure. Losing her is the emotional centre of Jolson and they don’t exploit it too mawkishly.We’re all too familiar with the scene changes in showbiz musicals – dressing room, restaurant, penthouse apartment, film studios – but the writers Francis Essex and Rob Bettinson (who directs) have come up with a funny, fast-moving and unpretentious book, that packs in, if anything, too many Twenties songs.In the musical, unlike the career, Jolson spends very little time with a black face. In case “blacking up” worries you, there’s a cute scene where Jolson helps a black kid who wants to go into showbusiness So that’s all right then. Happily we join the Jolson story when he’s already a success – which spares us the audition scene – and we follow his decision to go solo, his rise and rise, his fall and his comeback.