Over the past few months we have found ourselves involved in a number of conversations about the current trend in theatre companies of producing adaptations of popular children’s books. We can’t say we blame them as Julia Donaldson favourites such as Room on the Broom and Oliver Jeffers’s books are playing to sell-out audiences, with happy parents, happy children and happy venue managers.

This trend seems to extend much further than the world of children’s theatre. Hollywood have been reusing and recycling for many years. Look at the most recent blockbuster to be hitting our screens: Les Miserables,  first a book, then an extremely popular musical, so why wouldn’t the film industry want a piece of the action? In fact, amongst the awards nominations, original stories and characters are few and far between.

The music industry is also keen to recycle, with artists constantly covering old songs or sampling large sections. The successes of X-Factor and the BBC Live Lounge have meant that topping the chart is assisted by a re-vamp of an already popular song. That is before we even get started on the current trend in adverts for female solo acoustic covers.

It seems that with a title comes an element of safety and security. If it has sold once it’s most likely it will sell again with fans eager to see it in its new variation or form – unless you count Jedward’s contribution of Under Pressure (Ice Ice Baby)! As creatures of habit, we often take joy in the product’s familiarity, looking for new ways to enjoy what we know we already like. A recent, successful example of this in the theatre is the all-female cast of Julius Caesar at the Donmar Warehouse, based in a women’s prison. Seeing the play re-contextualised and reimagined can be thought-provoking and refreshing.

We’ve used this theory ourselves with our re-telling of Snow White. We thought that as a new company no one would recognise our name or know who we were, therefore they would be unsure as to the quality and style of our work. However, with the show bearing the title Snow White, audiences and programmers can make an educated guess as to what they will be getting (even if we did then put our own spin on it).

So new adaptations are not a bad thing once in a while, but why aren’t companies creating their own fresh, original stories to tell? Is it too difficult? Too time-consuming? Or are our audiences simply not willing to take the risk on something new?

Could the current economic situation have an effect? If people are limiting how many theatre visits they can make due to their budget, they’re going to want to know that the selected show is going to be good. Therefore, on a very basic level, a well-known title = safe, whilst new, unknown = risky. This will surely affect the decisions that venue programmers make if a popular title of a familiar show is more likely to guarantee a reduction in their risk of empty seats.

It may also be the ‘Trip Advisor’ effect – where people won’t go anywhere or buy into anything until they have had its quality assured by others. How many people will wait until they read a review before booking tickets to an event? The internet makes this easy to do. However, you still need people to take that initial chance.

If this is the case what can we do, as an arts industry, to encourage new work? And just as critically, encourage audiences to go and take a risk and watch it? Some venues do work to make this happen. The Royal Court is renowned and celebrated as a home for new writing, as is the Tricycle. They both find a way to engage their audience, building trust in their judgement and their brand, and therefore make audiences return to watch new work performed there. Critically, it is the venue that becomes the point of familiarity for an audience.

This principle of trust might be the key. Audiences trust familiar titles, companies and venues. They want an assurance of quality and this is a way to achieve it. It appears, therefore, that it is our duty to build trust amongst theatregoers, to make them feel confident in taking a risk. In order for this to happen it feels that a change in attitude is required; a change that needs to be supported throughout the industry from the media, to venues, to theatre makers and theatre training.

It simply comes down to discovering what audiences really want. Yes, they want to enjoy high quality adaptations, but they also want to be challenged, to see and experience new stories and new ways of telling stories. Surely we have plenty of current, relevant and original stories to share?

In the Epistle Dedicatory that precedes Man and Superman, George Bernard Shaw contended that “in Shakespeare’s plays, the woman always takes the initiative”. This may be true for some of the comedies or problem plays – take Rosalind in As You Like It or Mariana in Measure For Measure – but it is certainly not true of Julius Caesar. There are only two female roles, both minor domestic sideshows to the political power games. In this audacious all-female production at the Donmar Warehouse, Phyllida Lloyd redresses this grievance with flair.

This production has several notable precedents: there was an all-female Julius Caesar at Colchester’s Mercury Theatre in 2007, and Lloyd herself directed an all-female Taming of the Shrew at the Globe in 2003. However, perhaps the most significant influence on Lloyd was Caesar Must Die, the Italian docudrama about prison inmates rehearsing a version of Julius Caesar – for Lloyd’s production, too, takes place in a prison. Given that Caesar Must Die and Lloyd’s The Iron Lady were screened at the Berlin Film Festival – where the former won the Golden Bear – this homage is likely deliberate.

In a postmodern flourish, Lloyd makes clear that we are watching not a staging of Julius Caesar but a staging of a staging. The female inmates are acting out the play in the prison’s confines, and, tellingly, the text’s gender references are not changed; there is no “friends, Romans, countrywomen”. This underlines not just the play’s exploration of authority and power, but also its brutality: this is a very physical, energetic production, which frequently evokes the exhilaration of a prison riot. Actors jump from the metal walkways of the austere set; demonstrations and battles are soundtracked by Gary Yershon’s heavy metal score. At some points, the prison reality intrudes on the play itself; in one particularly savage moment, the Roman mob’s assault on Cinna the poet gets out of hand and the prison warden has to intervene.

For the most part, the production works. Its vigour and judicious textual edits ensure that Julius Caesar’s interval-less two hours go by very quickly. The ingenious on-stage use of a guitar and drumkit give musicality to a play that can risk being staid; Tom Gibbons’s sound design excellently conveys the capriciousness of the Roman crowd; there is an ingenious moment in which a wild dog (Carolina Valdés) tries to warn Caesar of the Ides of March.

That’s not to say it is completely successful. In one of Lloyd’s more over-the-top embellishments, Caesar forces a doughnut into Cassius’s mouth; this is a literal expression of the production’s tendency to bite off more than it can chew. There is a awful lot going on here, and there are some odd directorial decisions: why does the soothsayer ride a buggy and, later, wander the stage nude holding a baby? Some of the props, too, are a little cheap: the crepe paper crown in a Tupperware box, for example, or the cardboard print-out Caesar masks that his followers wear.

However, we forget all of these flaws amid the brilliant acting. The true measure of a good Julius Caesar is the portrayal of Brutus, and by this yardstick the production is a triumph: Harriet Walter, with her slicked-back hair and gaunt, hollowed-out cheeks, is an extraordinary presence, fully conveying the senator’s clashing impulses. Jenny Jules’s Cassius is intense, and Isha Bennison’s resigned Casca a frequent source of comic relief. The excellent Charlotte Josephine, too – soon to bring her monologue Bitch Boxer to the Soho Theatre – is also given a role as Brutus’s servant Lucius, a role too small to showcase her talents fully but which does allow her to showcase her saxophone skills.

Due to the production’s feminist conceit, the speeches that do address gender issues acquire a special resonance. Much is made of Act II Scene IV, when Brutus’s wife Portia pleads with her husband to consider her equal to her male counterparts: “I have a man’s mind but a woman’s might”. However, as the play goes on, this kind of debate seems increasingly tangential. As we become absorbed in the play, we forget about the gendered casting completely; it ultimately comes down to the universal human concerns of power, ambition and betrayal. In describing her goals for this production, Phyllida Lloyd has been forthright: she wants to show that women can do a play like Julius Caesar. The casting is an initial shock, but rapidly the show cuts right through to the human – and that is the greatest success of all.

Julius Caesar continues at the Donmar until 9 February. More information can be found on the theatre’s website.

At one point in The Promise, Lika – the female protagonist and dramatic centre of Aleksei Arbuzov’s 1965 three-hander – sighs that she is not as heroic as she looks on paper. The play, in the same fashion, falls short of its paper credentials.

A colossal success in the USSR, The Promise was first seen on the British stage at the Oxford Playhouse in a version starring the impressive trio of Judi Dench, Ian McKellen and Ian McShane. In 2002 it was revived at the Tricycle in a new version by the ever-reliable Nick Dear; ten years later it comes to Trafalgar Studios in a new adaptation by Penelope Skinner, one of Britain’s most exciting and spirited young dramatists. There must be something about The Promise, one assumes, that has earned it such a distinguished theatrical history – it is not uncommon to see it referred to as a “lost classic”. And yet, the play itself stubbornly refuses to be anything of the kind.

At the heart of The Promise is a simple love triangle. During the gruesome carnage of the Siege of Leningrad, teenagers Lika, Marat and Leodinik struggle to survive in a cramped apartment. Their building is already full of corpses and Lika cannot remember a time when she was not hungry. In the fire of the siege, relationships are forged that will last forever – but only one of the men can have Lika.

The importance of Leningrad is seared into the play’s structure. The first half charts the pivotal siege, the second half its consequences. Regrettably, while the play is good on said siege, it is not so good on said consequences. In the first half, Skinner mines the period’s austerity for its pitch-black humour, but in a way that illuminates rather than trivialises. There is also genuine warmth as the central trio connect with each other. Here the production is its most confident: Joanna Vanderham’s wide-eyed, irrepressible Lika carries the story and, with its urgent atmosphere and raucous bombardment, it is no surprise that the play has the same associate director and sound designer as War Horse.

However, it is in the second half – which spans the years 1946 to 1960 – that The Promise’s fundamental mediocrity becomes clear. This act is largely concerned with the changing hopes and beliefs of the three characters – how the lucky survivors’ youthful dreams have squared up against hard reality. This stale theme lends itself to banality and, sure enough, despite Skinner’s insertion of some nice lines, not even her hand is enough to save Arbuzov’s dialogue from becoming a vehicle for corny platitudes. “On the eve of death, it isn’t too late to start one’s life from the beginning.” “We will triumph as long as we’re not afraid to be happy.” It is easy to see how these individualistic chestnuts can speak to an oppressed audience in a bureaucratised society – but for a contemporary Western audience, long assailed by the bromides of the self-actualisation movement, they sound uncomfortably close to Alain de Botton’s Twitter account.

The Promise plays at the Trafalgar Studios until 8 December. For more information and tickets, see the Trafalgar Studios website.

Berenice conforms to the governing rules of the ‘unities’ laid out by Aristotle, which require the play to be ‘coherent, a unified whole, within twenty-four hours, in the same residential space.’ Adhering to the ‘unity of time’ allows Racine to expose the detail of decision and indecision faced by the characters. In this new version, directed by Josie Rourke, Racine’s wish to construct theatre that went beyond mere entertainment is clearly upheld, and the story thrives.

In devotion to the unity of unchanging space, the set is an ambiguously located neutral ground, neither inside nor outside the palace. The set – designed by Lucy Osbourne – is stunning, and solidifies the genius of this production. The stage, which is set in the round, is covered in hills of undulating sand; four of five plumes of thinly sprinkled sand fall from above, dancing in the hazy yellow spotlights. A spiral staircase curves over the entire width of the stage and two chairs stand, their legs planted into the mounds of sand.

The sand, which could have become a distraction, could not stop the audience becoming completely engrossed by the story. Anne-Marie Duff plays Berenice, portraying beautifully the surrendered spirit of a woman in love. Duff carries a certain maturity and sophistication that is fitting to Berenice, a queen and a lover. Stephen Campbell Moore as Titus is physically dominating, yet his face gradually reveals a weariness. As the conflict within him rises, Moore lets it manifest in his body, dropping despairingly to his knees and succumbing to the weight of his guilt. The supporting actors compose themselves with the required neutrality and provide an essence of the Roman Empire that summons Titus into action, against his will and love for Berenice.

Racine purposely toys with the audience’s perception. We are introduced first to Dominic Rowan’s tender and reserved Antiochus, who tells us his love for Berenice, meaning we feel an initial empathy with him rather than with Titus. Rowan speaks very naturally, in contrast with a tendency among some others in the cast to sometimes sound rehearsed, although I felt this was more to do with Alan Hollinghurst’s translation than a failing of the actors. However, in general what is most striking about this translation is its lyrical success in spite of the language jump from French to English. Despite the piece being considerably shortened, Rourke retains the infamous soliloquies in which Racine so candidly allows the characters to speak of their emotions. While Berenice is a love story, it is not conventional in its telling of it. Similarly, while it teeters towards the devastation found in typical Greek tragedies, it swiftly veers away towards a cooler conclusion.

Berenice is running at the Donmar Warehouse until 24 November. See the Donmar Warehouse website for more information and to book. Photo by Johan Persson.