MARTIN GUERRE Old Vic SE1

A WILD DECEPTION Solemnly, a great dark chime summons a ring of black-cloaked figures, pleading forgiveness, singing of disgrace, circling round a stack of peasant props – tables, stools, brooms, hayforks. The cloaks are flung off, garlands thrown, penitence turns to a wedding celebration. If you’re in a late-booked £34 stage stall, threateningly close, the sense of passionate village primitivisim is overwhelming. It continues so for 95 tense minutes, with all the wild-sung passion that its creators Claude-Michel Schonnberg and Alain Boublil brought to Les Miserables. It is the story, supposedly true, of a young man married against his will to Bertrande, unable to consummate it and so blamed for bringing Satan’s curse of drought on the town. He runs away, is (we think) killed in battle – suddenly banners in the dim light and flying – but an army friend returns seven years on, claiming Martin Guerre’s identity and having children by Bertrande (it’s raining by now: beautiful…