Hitchcock Blonde, Royal Court Downstairs, London<br></br>The Taming of the Shrew/ The Tamer Tamed, RST/ Swan, Stratford-Upon-Avon<br></br>Macbeth, Barbican, London<br></br>Got To Be Happy, Bush, London

So this is where an obsession with fair-haired babes gets you

Hitchcock Blonde, Royal Court Downstairs, London
The Taming of the Shrew/ The Tamer Tamed, RST/ Swan, Stratford-Upon-Avon
Macbeth, Barbican, London
Got To Be Happy, Bush, London

Terry Johnson is a gratifying playwright, typically dishing up entertainment accompanied by smart dramatic conceits. So, Hitchcock Blonde wasn't likely to be dumb fare. Johnson's new detective yarn about filmmakers, cinephiles and fetishistic passions is intriguing, in theory. Timewise, it's three-ply. In 1999, a film-studies tutor called Alex (David Haig) suggests that his peroxided student, Nicola (Fiona Glascott), should become his research assistant. At his Greek holiday villa he seduces her – Nicola's resistance crumbling when she finds a doctor's note saying he is terminally sick.

Meanwhile, professionally, they don gloves like forensic investigators to open up the canisters of a film archive. As they piece together the snippets of The Uninvited Guest, we glean this is an unknown Hitchcock movie from 1919. It features an ominous scene with a blonde in a bath, foreshadowing the shower scene in Psycho. In flashback, we also see Hitch (look-alike William Hootkins) in 1959, getting entangled with another platinum bombshell (Rosamund Pike) who is meant to be Janet Leigh's body-double in Psycho but wants to be a leading lady. Some tensions build as her trailer-trash husband broods silently at home.

The mystery is what happened to those past blondes, on- and off-screen.

While playing around with fact and fiction, Johnson also explains (or pretends to explain) the roots of Hitchcock's – and Alex's – cruel obsession with golden-haired babes. Asking whether Hitchcock must have been a twisted sadist to make his thrillers is a fascinating line of inquiry. Moreover Johnson as writer-director plays some uncomfortable, self-implicating games, making us voyeurs as he requires blonde actresses to strip.

However, the execution of this piece leaves something to be desired. Hitchcock would surely have cringed at William Dudley's set in which the computer-generated vistas are wholly unconvincing. Simultaneously, one wishes Johnson's plot wasn't so neatly engineered and his dialogue less stilted. One might draw comparisons with the era-spanning stories of The Hours or Stoppard's Arcadia, but most of the characters seem two-dimensional here and the embedded ideas from feminist film theory are hardly new.

Haig is on fine form – a comical balding saddo with mean flashes and witty observations about ageing. But Glascott tends to holler and Hootkins' initially disturbing impersonation of Hitch ends up a disappointing cameo. Ah well, if you're like Alex and prefer suspense to satisfaction, you'll be happy to wait for Johnson's next play, hoping for a work of real genius.

The Taming of the Shrew is a variation on the folkloric archetypes of the dark and fair sisters. Kate's the bad girl while everybody loves sweet Bianca. The lesson Petruchio teaches Kate is notoriously hard to stomach today, post-women's lib. The bridegroom, after all, deprives his spirited wife of her basic human rights. The close of Shakespeare's domestic comedy – if such it is – remains awkward in Greg Doran's new production. But en route, his take is often brilliant and radical. Alexandra Gilbreath's Kate is hilarious – a little fury slamming doors ten times over with a gusto that makes you love her. Equally, she can seem seriously damaged – starved of love.

Initially, Britton comes over as a swaggering soldier of fortune, arriving in a seedy Padua that's all peeling doors, scraggy gowns and shameless moneymaking. Yet underneath this Petruchio is also emotionally shaky, still wearing a black armband for his father's death. His first wooing scene with Gilbreath is astonishingly romantic. He floors her in a childish rough-and-tumble, tickling her foot till she roars with laughter. Then he holds her face in his hand with overwhelming tenderness She is smitten by that, not by manhandling. Her show of obedience is a game whose rules they both understand, while his later bullying is partly explained by a drink problem and a falling-back on the tough falcon-training creed of his father.

Getting its first major revival in centuries, John Fletcher's sequel, The Tamer Tamed, proves a proto-feminist gem. Set after Kate's death, Gilbreath now plays Maria – a more teasingly rebellious soul. She turns the tables on Britton's fuming but fond Petruchio and leads a small army of ladies in a merry insurrection. The dialogue is peppered with explosively funny jokes and the cast's exuberance is a joy.

At the Barbican, the BITE season briefly showcased Macbeth from Barcelona's Theatre Romeo, directed by Calixto Bieito. Here the Thane of Cawdor and his royal circle appear to be suburban criminals throwing a squalid, 1970s party – complete with barbecue. King Duncan sprawls on a white PVC sofa, an old lech with a gurgling laugh. Macbeth is a thickset thug, Malcolm is a manic druggie, there's one "weird sister" waving a sparkler, and Banquo croons disco hits at an electric keyboard.

A bit of me admires Bieito for his sheer gall. His lack of respect for the text is almost on a par with Macbeth's affront to the divine right of kings – with lines the Bard never wrote lobbed in (spoken in Catalan, with English surtitles). But Bieito is a dictator-director imposing his concept and missing the point that if everyone's foul, there's little poignancy or moral conflict. Roser Camí's wildly dancing Lady Macbeth is unforgettable – sluttish, abused and angry. But Bieito's stabs at shocking violence can be risibly clumsy and the final ditty with everyone singing, "Death is not the end," just feels flippant. This is Macbeth retold by an idiot.

Got To Be Happy is a more run-of-the-mill yet sensitive four-hander, set in grungy pub kitchen where writer Simon Burt depicts doomed romances with quiet warmth. One young couple pulls apart, as the waitress Caroline heads off to college, while the ageing cook Charley fails to reunite with Connie, his old flame. Paul Copley's taciturnity as Charley can seem limited but he exudes simmering fondness, and Lisa Ellis is excellent as the chatty, nosey Caroline. While Macbeth wearies of "tomorrow and tomorrow", both Burt and his young director Owen Lewis have bright futures.

k.bassett@independent.co.uk

'Hitchcock Blonde': Royal Court, London SW1 (020 7565 5000), to 24 May; 'The Taming of the Shrew'/'The Tamer Tamed': RST/Swan, Stratford (01789 403403), to 8 Nov; 'Got To Be Happy': Bush, London W12 (020 7610 4224), to 3 May