Theatre review: Treasure

The latest "forgotten" play to be unearthed at the Finborough Theatre is thought to be a British premiere: Colin Chambers has written a new adaptation of David Pinski's 1906 Yiddish play Treasure. Part of a whole genre of Yiddish theatre that went on to inspire Fiddler on the Roof, the play is set in a Jewish town in a part of Russia that would nowadays be within the boundaries of Belarus. There Chone (James Pearse) has been the local gravedigger for the last 14 years, not a well-paid job but a steady one as the harsh conditions mean he's never short of customers. When his simpleton son Judke (Sid Sagar) buries his dog, he finds a stash of sovereigns which he gives as a gift to his sister Tille (Olivia Bernstone.) This puts Tille in an unusual position of power over Chone and his wife Jachne-Braine (Fiz Marcus,) who beg her for the gold coins; but she has plans to see what it's like to be rich, if only for one day.

Theatre review: Twelfth Night (Custom/Practice / Lion & Unicorn)

You're never more than ten feet away from a production of Twelfth Night, so another one is rarely the most exciting prospect. On the other hand, what's the point of discovering companies that show promise if you don't follow up on it? I pretty much stumbled upon Rae McKen's company Custom/Practice with their Dream last summer, and now they turn to Shakespeare's story of boy/girl identical twins washed ashore in a foreign land after a shipwreck, each unaware that the other has survived, and getting caught up in the escapades of lovestruck Orsino, grieving Olivia, and the latter's household of drunks and fools. McKen's production is modern-dress, and she hasn't quite found an alternative setting that works for the story; much more successful though is the way the characters are adapted around having a particularly young cast (two are still at Italia Conti.)

Theatre review: Spring Awakening

Although I've heard of Frank Wedekind's Spring Awakening and knew roughly what it was about, I'd never seen the original play on stage before. So I now come to it from the unusual position of being very familiar with the much-loved (but not by enough people to keep it open) musical adaptation. Would I be able to see it as anything other than the show I liked with the best bits taken out? The story revolves around three teenagers: Wendla (Ana Luderowski) is 14, and keeps asking her mother for the facts of life, but gets only evasive answers. Moritz (Joe Sowerbutts) isn't that bright, his life mainly consisting of studying for exams he has no chance of passing; having had it drummed into him that academic success is everything, the prospect of failing is enough to turn his thoughts to suicide. Meanwhile the central figure of Melchior (David Palmstrom) is a bit too clever for his own good: Seeing himself as an atheist and iconoclast, he's taught himself about sex from books, and his attempts to share his knowledge with his classmates will backfire horribly.