Theatre review: Treasure

The latest "forgotten" play to be unearthed at the Finborough Theatre is thought to be a British premiere: Colin Chambers has written a new adaptation of David Pinski's 1906 Yiddish play Treasure. Part of a whole genre of Yiddish theatre that went on to inspire Fiddler on the Roof, the play is set in a Jewish town in a part of Russia that would nowadays be within the boundaries of Belarus. There Chone (James Pearse) has been the local gravedigger for the last 14 years, not a well-paid job but a steady one as the harsh conditions mean he's never short of customers. When his simpleton son Judke (Sid Sagar) buries his dog, he finds a stash of sovereigns which he gives as a gift to his sister Tille (Olivia Bernstone.) This puts Tille in an unusual position of power over Chone and his wife Jachne-Braine (Fiz Marcus,) who beg her for the gold coins; but she has plans to see what it's like to be rich, if only for one day.

Theatre review: fiji land

Guantanamo Bay gets an absurdist makeover in Nick Gill's fiji land, which follows three men being slowly broken by a strange responsibility. Grainer (Jake Ferretti) has taken a well-paid job somewhere hot, remote, and in some way connected to the military. He shares his shifts with two others, working two-on, one-off: Wolstead (Matthew Trevannion) is a loud-mouthed conspiracy theorist who likes to document everything with a Polaroid camera. Tanc (Stephen Bisland) is laconic, sinister and, in some vague way, in charge. They work in a greenhouse "guarding" six rows of small pot-plants. When an alarm sounds, they have to water the plants - except for the back row, which is being "punished." Grainer tries to relate to his co-workers to help get through their work, but behind their confident facades they too are being slowly driven mad by what they do.