Theatre review: I See You

It must be a strange time to be Noma Dumezweni; a couple of months ago she was stepping into a lead role with zero notice, and she's another couple of months away from a potentially career-changing (and joyously Mail-annoying) role in Harry Potter. Her job between the two is positively low-key in comparison, but would be the high point of most people's year - she steps from centre stage to behind the scenes for her directorial debut (this interview suggests she basically says yes to offers first and worries about how she'll pull it off later.) You can see why the Royal Court would think of her for South African playwright Mongiwekhaya's (one name, like Cher) I See You: Dumezweni's family left South Africa when she was a child to flee Apartheid, and that's also what Ben's (Bayo Gbadamosi) family did when he was three years old. But now that he's 19 Ben's returned to study Law in a country that's no longer a war zone; or so he thinks, but for Officer Buthelezi (Desmond Dube) there's still a war going on, and Ben's the enemy.

Theatre review: Sizwe Banzi is Dead

Last autumn, as well as Athol Fugard's Apartheid-era The Island in the Clare, the Young Vic had a short run of another of his plays (also co-devised with John Kani and Winston Ntshona.) So short a run in fact that I couldn't fit it into my schedule, and it also sold out very quickly. But its popularity didn't go unnoticed so the theatre has brought Sizwe Banzi is Dead back to the Maria for a longer run, and the story of black South Africans making their way in the world of work while navigating the labyrinthine system of paperwork and arbitrary restrictions proves worthy of the attention. But before we get to the show itself, Matthew Xia's production manages something of a first: I've never before seen what could legitimately be called a coup de théâtre pulled off 20 minutes before the play even started. In case you're trying to stay spoiler-free I'll save it for the next paragraph, after the text break.