Theatre review: Old Bridge

There are a few theatrical tropes I really should start putting money on: For example if a playwright says his play "is about hope, really," it's a pretty safe bet that just outside the theatre there'll be a trigger warning longer than your arm, to tell you it's a play about war, murder, suicide, prejudice, sexual assault and wound detail, really. Having moved from the Finborough to Southwark Playhouse's Little space, the annual Papatango playwrighting prize continues to upgrade to bigger venues, and its new home is the Bush's main house. Igor Memic's professional debut is actually the overdue 2020 winner; Memic comes from a Yugoslavian family, in the sense that that country still existed when they moved to the UK. And the play's setting is the town of Mostar, now in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but in 1988 a good example of Yugoslavia's many ethnic groups unsuspecting of the coming division: The Old Bridge of the title technically separates the Christian and Muslim parts of town, but in reality they, as well as a few Jews and people from a variety of other backgrounds, basically coexist quietly.

Theatre review: To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is never far from the top in any poll of best-loved novels, a fact that Timothy Sheader's production references throughout with copies of the book ever present: All different shapes, sizes and covers reflecting how many editions there have been, the supporting cast sit at the sides when they're not playing a role, reading through the story that's unfolding on stage. It also turns them into a chorus, narrating the story of the Finch family of Alabama in 1935. Scout (Ava Potter at this performance, alternating with Jemima Bennett and Rosie Boore) and her older brother Jem (Tommy Rodger, alternating with Harry Bennett, Billy Price and Arthur Franks) lost their mother when they were very young and now live with their father Atticus and their cook Calpurnia (Susan Lawson-Reynolds.) This production originated at Regents Park, and for this Barbican revival Robert Sean Leonard returns to play Atticus, a lawyer putting his all into a case he knows he can't win in a still overtly-racist South: Tom Robinson (Zackary Momoh) is a black man accused of raping a white woman.