Theatre review: The Chronicles of Kalki

Concluding the Gate's patchy "Who Does She Think She Is?" season on women and identity is, for me, the most interesting of the imported American shows we've seen get their UK premieres here. Alex Brown directs a breathless production of Aditi Brennan Kapil's play The Chronicles of Kalki, which sees a pair of teenage girls find empowerment with the help of a friend who may or may not be the living embodiment of a god. Kalki (Amrita Acharia) is the new girl in school, arriving halfway through an RE class about the avatars of Hindu gods. She befriends two girls whom she nicknames Meat (Angela Terence) and Betty (Jordan Loughran.) Never the most popular girls in school, they've even turned on each other recently, each thinking the other is holding her popularity back. Betty wants to be accepted by the resident gang of mean girls, the C-Cups, while Meat just wants the boys to notice her.

Theatre review: The Island

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: This review is of the final preview performance before Press Night.

The Island currently being reconstructed in the Young Vic's Clare is Robben Island, better known as the place Nelson Mandela spent his years of captivity. Athol Fugard's play, devised with John Kani & Winston Ntshona, follows a couple of days in the lives of two political prisoners, cellmates who didn't know each other until they offended the Apartheid regime and ended up spending 24 hours a day together. When we meet them they've spent a day moving wheelbarrow loads of sand up and down the beach, a task designed to turn them on each other as each sees his cellmate make his own job an endless one. This particular bit of cruelty is a new one, but typical of their lives there. Once finally back in their cell their exhaustion doesn't stop them working towards a small triumph of their own: There's an inmates' concert coming up and John (Daniel Poyser) is intent on staging a version of Antigone, with Winston (Jimmy Akingbola) in the title role.