Theatre review: Affluenza

Riverside Studios have taken the unusual step of launching a major season of five plays, importing off-Broadway director Andy Sandberg to curate the season and direct all the shows, as well as writing the opener. As far as I can tell Sandberg doesn't even seem to be a particularly big name in New York so I'm not sure what led to the red carpet being laid out for him to this extent - maybe the venue was hoping people would misread his name as Andy Samberg and get some ticket sales in? In any case I'm sure their confidence in him is justified, and he wouldn't open the season with a show whose title has already become a byword for disaster within days of its opening, would he? Affluenza opens in the aftermath of a car crash, in which 16-year-old drunk driver Dylan (Noah Schnapp) has caused a three-car collision, killing at least two people.

Theatre review: Operation Epsilon

I've talked before about how similar, highly specific ideas seem to crop up on different stages around the same time, but this is a whole new level of specificity: Alan Brody's Operation Epsilon is the true story of the German nuclear scientists who were captured by Allied forces near the end of the Second World War, and held at an English country pile so that the British and Americans could ascertain just how close the Nazis had come to developing nuclear weapons. And yes, this is based directly on the men's actual conversations, recorded by the military in secret. If I sound like I'm repeating myself it's because that was also the premise of Katherine Moar's Farm Hall, which I was a big fan of when it premiered about six months ago. I guess you can blame Oppenheimer for everyone deciding the other side of the story would hook audiences.