Theatre review: The Brothers Size

After twenty or so years running the Young Vic it’s understandable if David Lan wants to bring back a past hit in his final season; and unsurprising if that’s The Brothers Size, given playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney’s high profile following Moonlight’s win (and the headline-grabbing mix-up) at last year’s Oscars. This is the play that first made McCraney’s name in the UK and, written around the same as the unperformed play that inspired Moonlight, it’s different but recognisably covers some of the same ground. Oshoosi Size (Jonathan Ajayi) has recently been released from prison and, while on parole, is living with his older brother Ogun (Sope Dirisu,) a mechanic who’s been making a success of his own garage while Oshoosi’s been away. Oshoosi is enjoying his freedom and wants his own car so he can test its limits, but Ogun insists he get a job and stick strictly to the terms of his probation.

Theatre review: After Miss Julie

If TV period dramas have taught us one thing, it's that 1930s and '40s chauffeurs' primary function was to make themselves available for sex at the lady of the house's whim. And so it is in After Miss Julie, Patrick Marber's adaptation of Strindberg's Miss Julie. Marber makes the play's class relations particularly British by setting the play in a country house in 1945, on the night of Labour's election victory, with the working man and woman looking like they're about to get more of a say in the world. (Thanks to the Beautiful People soundtrack, "Things Can Only Get Better" is on my iPod, which chose to play it on my way home; wrong election, but the right idea.) Patrick Burnier's set makes the audience descend a long staircase to the ground level of the Maria, bringing us to the kitchen of a country house. Most of the staff are upstairs celebrating, and the master of the house is in London on business, but his daughter Miss Julie (Natalie Dormer) has stayed behind. Cook Christine (Polly Frame) has skipped the party though and is in the kitchen making a snack for chauffeur John (Kieran Bew) whom she's "unofficially" engaged to; she's also making a foul-smelling concoction intended to make Julie's lapdog miscarry its puppies.