Theatre review: The Secret Theatre

Anders Lustgarten doesn’t seem an obvious fit for the Swanamaker, but in comparing present-day paranoia and manipulation by politicians to the intrigue of Elizabeth I’s court he’s found a subject that doesn’t just suit the time the venue recreates, but also feels at home in the shadows of the candlelit playhouse. The Secret Theatre is about the Queen’s spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham (Aidan McArdle,) who responded to the numerous assassination plots against her by creating the first surveillance state. He lives surrounded by paper, collecting files on Catholic threats and potential traitors, planting spies everywhere he can - often to spy on each other – and seeding an atmosphere of suspicion that seeps into every corner of the country. His plan is that his secret service should be the world’s worst-kept secret: You don’t actually need to watch everyone if everyone thinks they’re being watched.

Theatre review: The Sugar-Coated Bullets of the Bourgeoisie

Having studied China and the Chinese language for much of his life, political playwright Anders Lustgarten finally turns to it as the subject for a play in The Sugar-Coated Bullets of the Bourgeoisie - named after a quote from a Chairman Mao speech. It's a history of China in microcosm from 1949 to the present day in the village of Rotten Peach, beginning with Party representatives Xu (Andrew Leung) and Tang (Louise Mai Newberry) arriving to tell the peasants they have to put the local landlord Zhang (Siu Hun Li) on trial. Zhang is confident they'll fear change as much as ever and vote to let him keep everything, but events take a sudden and violent turn, leading to Rotten Peach becoming a model co-operative and enjoying a few years of high productivity before things start to go wrong.

Theatre review: Shrapnel - 34 Fragments of a Massacre

Anders Lustgarten can be something of a blunt instrument as a writer, a political playwright whose work is fuelled by anger - sometimes to its advantage, other times to its detriment. There's a slightly different approach in his latest play, though: The anger is still there in Shrapnel - 34 Fragments of a Massacre, but instead of something fiery he lets it seethe, as he observes from a distance the different situations and interests that conspired to cause the 2011 Roboski Massacre in Turkey. A group of Kurdish men, mostly teenagers, regularly smuggled diesel near the Syrian border. Despite knowing that such smuggling missions were common, the Turkish army seemingly mistook them for a terrorist cell on the move, and authorised a US missile drone to open fire and effectively vaporise them.

Theatre review: Black Jesus

"I rode into town on an ass. YO MAMA'S ASS!" Actually no, Black Jesus isn't an extended version of that Family Guy cutaway gag, but Anders Lustgarten's return to the Finborough after a shaky outing at the Royal Court. Black Jesus is the nickname given to Gabriel Chibamu (Paapa Essiedu,) a particularly brutal footsoldier in Robert Mugabe's regime, so called because he got to pass judgement on people's fates. The play takes place in 2015, and Gabriel's exactly where he feels he belongs, in prison. Eunice (The Ensemble^TM's Debbie Korley) works for the Truth and Justice Commission, an organisation she knows full well has been set up primarily so that it looks to the outside world as if Zimbabwe is doing something to confront its past.

Theatre review: If You Don't Let Us Dream, We Won't Let You Sleep

Anders Lustgarten is a full-time activist whose last play saw the BNP field an Asian candidate at the Finborough in time for the last election. Now that we know what actually happened in that election, he turns his attention to the politics of austerity. And the Royal Court Downstairs stage goes austere as well, with a production without décor for If You Don't Let Us Dream, We Won't Let You Sleep. The short play opens with a cabal of politicians, bankers and business leaders proposing the monetisation of society's downfall: Private companies will be responsible for crime prevention, and if the figures drop their bonds will pay out. But market forces have their own rules, and soon those who control the jails, hospitals and energy suppliers are betting short: The worse things get, the bigger their profits.