The Cane
Royal Court Theatre, London

Richard II
Almeida Theatre, London

The Convert
Young Vic Theatre, London

The pantomime season has traditionally wiped out serious theatre openings until towards the end of January. But, this year, several major new productions opened just before the festivities, probably due to this being the time that the desired actors were free.

The premise of Mark Ravenhill’s The Cane suggests a post-#MeToo version of the 1939 film, Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Edward is retiring from teaching after 40 admired years, when archive research for the speeches at his farewell assembly reveal that he once presided over the school’s then stinging corporal punishment policy. His “victims” (some even calling themselves “survivors”) ignite a digital inferno that makes Edward and his wife, Maureen, prisoners in their home.

What makes the play unnerving is that Ravenhill takes no easy sides. Critics and audience members disagreed over whether the writer is advocating educational caners as the next candidates for disgrace and reparation, or if the hunting of Edward satirises the extension to absurdity of the modern tendency to judge past behaviour by present morality.