Theatre review: Small Island

This time last year Rufus Norris strayed out of his comfort zone for his big Olivier stage production with notoriously disastrous consequences, but he's back to much more familiar territory now for a big emotional, political epic that spans years, continents and clashing cultures. Helen Edmundson adapts Andrea Levy's Small Island, whose story about the Windrush generation has become topical again in recent years. Its three narrators are initially separated by an ocean, but chance and the Second World War will throw them together in life-changing ways: First up we meet Hortense (Leah Harvey,) a teacher in a remote Jamaican village whose romantic feelings about her cousin Michael (CJ Beckford) are crushed so abruptly it leaves her cold, spiky and pragmatic to the point of calculating; while she stays in Jamaica, Michael goes to England to join the war effort.

Theatre review: James III - The True Mirror

Another change of pace from writer Rona Munro and director Laurie Sansom as we reach the end of the epic trilogy The James Plays with James III - The True Mirror. And if the first two Scottish kings to bear that name were complex characters whose actions weren't always easy to sympathise with, Jamie Sives' James III turns out to be an out-and-out dick. Flamboyant, bisexual, and preferring the grand gesture over the actual business of ruling, he's fond of squandering the country's meagre budget. A cathedral is the legacy he speaks of most, but in the meantime he'll settle for a choir to follow him around everywhere commentating on his actions. His relationships with courtiers Cochrane (Andrew Rothney) and Ramsay (Mark Rowley) as well as laundry girl Daisy¹ (Fiona Wood) are barely disguised from the court, least of all the queen. On the surface, his court is a place of safety and pleasure.

Theatre review: James II - Day of the Innocents

Rona Munro's James Plays are a trilogy, but each is meant not only to stand alone, but also to have its own distinct flavour. So it is with James II - Day of the Innocents, although arguably it's got two of them: After the epic action of James I we have something more intimate, centred on friendship and family, but before we can have that the hero, and the audience, have to face horrors. James I having been murdered, James II (Andrew Rothney) becomes king at the age of six. Too young to rule, he is a pawn in the wealthy earls' power struggles, even to the point of being kidnapped a couple of times as leverage. Livingston (Gordon Kennedy) finally gets the upper hand thanks to the infamous Black Dinner¹, in which the Earl of Douglas and his young brother are invited to dine with the king and, in violation of all the laws of hospitality, captured and killed. A childhood of bloodshed done in his name has left James with nightmares that persist well into his teens.

Theatre review: James I - The Key Will Keep The Lock

Laurie Sansom inaugurates his time in charge of the National Theatre of Scotland in epically ambitious fashion, in a co-production with the other National Theatre, Rona Munro's The James Plays. This trilogy of new history plays - a genre that's definitely back in fashion at the moment - looks at the first three King Jameses of Scotland, beginning right in the middle of the period Shakespeare looked at in his own English histories. At the start of James I - The Key Will Keep The Lock, Henry V (Jamie Sives) rules England, but not for much longer: The dysentery that would kill him is taking hold. In an attempt to leave one less source of conflict for his infant son to rule over, Henry frees his prisoner, King James of Scotland, who's been held hostage in England for 18 years. In return for being returned to his throne, James (James McArdle) is expected to pay a hefty ransom, which Henry hopes will leave the country too poor to wander South of the border; but James has other ideas.