Stage-to-screen review: Lights Up - Pale Sister

The second episode in the BBC's virtual theatre festival Lights Up appears to be a TV original - no co-producing theatre is credited and I can't find any reference to Trevor Nunn's production having been seen on stage before, although Lisa Dwan has played this role before - so it's ironic that it feels a particularly uncomfortable stage-to-screen transition. The role in question is Ismene, Antigone's timid sister from Sophocles' play, finally given a voice in Colm Tóibín's Pale Sister. An opening caption that hastily takes us through the basics of Antigone's story suggests this won't be ideal for those completely unfamiliar with the original, but Ismene does (after a lot of preamble) get to witnessing the war between her two brothers that leaves both dead but only one buried: Her uncle, King Creon, decrees that the body of Polyneices, who fought against him, should be left out for the vultures and jackals. Antigone defies him and the entire family crumbles under Creon's petty rage.

Theatre review: Not I / Footfalls / Rockaby

Welcome to this year's installment of "Nick never learns his lesson about Beckett." I have, in fact, had a Beckett rule in place for some time, that rule being "no Beckett, ever," but I still seem to keep finding excuses to break it, whether it be Juliet Stevenson or the prospect of unusually attractive tramps. Lisa Dwan's performance of Not I / Footfalls / Rockaby, three short plays dealing in some way or other with women reflecting on their lives, has been knocking around for a couple of years, starting at the Royal Court then spending some time in the West End before touring extensively. I'd avoided it, but what finally changed my mind was a story about the production causing audience members to have panic attacks: Like the prospect of getting splashed with stage blood, this is the sort of thing I find a perverse kind of selling point.