Theatre review: Wolves on Road

Following Beru Tessema's well-received House of Ife, the playwright returns to the Bush for another story with family at its heart, but this time also taking in much wider social and financial themes, as Wolves on Road dips its toe into cryptocurrency - and suggests that's probably as deep into that particular world it's safe to get into. Manny (Kieran Taylor-Ford) is looking to get rich quick, but so far his instincts to resell designer goods online have just resulted in him being saddled with a pile of fakes even the local market stalls won't take off him. His best friend Abs (Hassan Najib) gets him into a crypto app, and after his initial reservations Manny gets sucked into the seemingly limitless possibilities for growth. But the big money will come if they can get in on a new currency at the start, and a local boy done good has come up with a new app that combines crypto with a money transfer service.

Theatre review: August In England

Sir Lenny Henry has a couple of high-profile careers under his belt, with decades as a popular comedian followed by a move to classical acting later in life. Both feed into his playwrighting debut August In England, a monologue he also stars in and which opens with Henry arriving on stage to calypso music, pouring drinks for himself and the front row, and generally working the audience like a seasoned comic. It's perhaps not too surprising for an actor writing his first play to stick to a familiar persona, but I think there's something else going on here as well: In a sold-out show people have booked for its star power, he's reminding us that he's someone considered part of the fabric of this country, and his character August Henderson (I did wonder if the name was a tribute to the August Wilson plays Henry's appeared in) is very similar to his creator, with the crucial difference that Henry was born in the UK.

Stage-to-screen review: Monday Monologues

A quick roundup of a series of very short pieces courtesy of the Bush Theatre, which posted a new YouTube video every few weeks over the summer as their contribution to keeping theatre in people's minds and lives over lockdown. And lockdown is very specifically the theme of most of the Monday Monologues, beginning with Skype d8 by Travis Alabanza, in which Ibinabo Jack plays a woman fretting over what to wear for a virtual date with a man she'd only met a couple of times in person. It's frantic and funny as Jack's character recognises the ridiculousness of how much time she's spending making a good impression on Skype, but it does reveal an underside about how the starkness of having to deal with people virtually makes people feel exposed in a way face-to-face communication smooths out. The Bush's artistic director Lynette Linton directs most of the videos including this and the second, Shaun Dunne's Beds.

Theatre review: The High Table

The Bush's current season opened with a commitment to telling the stories of queer women of colour, a theme that's revisited in the latest main-house show as actor Temi Wilkey's playwrighting debut The High Table follows the preparations for a British-Nigerian lesbian wedding. It's an event the family are going to have a lot to say about - and not just the living family. Tara (Cherelle Skeete) introduces her parents Segun (David Webber) and Mosun (Jumoké Fashola) to her fiancée Leah (Ibinabo Jack) for the first time three months before the wedding. They've been together for some time and engaged for nine months at this point, so the fact that Tara has put it off for so long suggests she's worried about their reaction. And while they, in theory, accepted her coming out as bisexual a few years earlier, this confirmation that their daughter won't settle down with a man after all makes them show their true colours, and they refuse to attend the wedding.

Theatre review: Unknown Rivers

Chinonyerem Odimba’s Unknown Rivers is a reaction against stereotypes about black women, particularly the “strong black woman” trope, which Odimba feels is an expectation that only adds more pressure to a group with a higher-than-average tendency towards mental illness. She offers as an example four women of colour, two of whose mental health problems are quite quickly apparent, but all of whom have had issues with depression at some stage in their lives. When Nene (Nneka Okoye) became a teenage mother she retreated completely from the outside world: She never leaves the flat, and looks after her daughter when she’s at home but her mother Dee (Doreene Blackstock) has to take her to school, the playground and anywhere else outdoors. Nene’s best friend Lea (Renee Bailey) has been visiting her twice a week ever since she got ill, and thinks the time might have finally come for her to brave the outside world.