Theatre review: Alterations

When Indhu Rubasingham took over what was then the Tricycle, her first step was to ask audiences what they did and didn't like about the theatre, and responded with the practical changes people asked for. She'll be officially taking over at the National soon, so if she wants any early suggestions for the new gig might I recommend some new padding for the seats in the two main houses? Or if they can't afford that just yet, maybe no more 2hr+ shows without interval until they can? I genuinely don't know to what extent I felt lukewarm about Alterations, and to what extent I just spent half of it in pain from a seat that doesn't seem to have been reupholstered since Michael Abbensetts' play was brand-new. That would be 1978, and the story plays out over 48 hours in a Carnaby Street tailor's shop in September of the previous year (going by the prop newpaper announcing the death of Marc Bolan.)

Theatre review: Little Baby Jesus

All change for the JKM Award, which for several years has been based in the Young Vic's smallest studio space with productions getting very short performance runs, and now not only moves to the larger (albeit much less central) Orange Tree, but also runs for a full month as part of the theatre's main season. In addition its scope seems to have expanded in terms of the "classic plays" the winning directors get to choose from - the prize's definition has always embraced comparatively recent work but Little Baby Jesus only dates back to 2011. It's a canny choice as its writer Arinzé Kene had a recent hit with Misty, but you can also see why it would appeal to director Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu as a vehicle to showcase and hone his talents: A three-hander that uses a storytelling style to show the moments a trio of teenagers each felt they grew up, it offers a lot of opportunities to play around with style.

Theatre review: Death of a Salesman

Spoiler alert: The salesman still dies.

If London's unofficial Arthur Miller festival has been all about the playwright's unforgiving criticism of capitalism, it's only fitting that its finale is Death of a Salesman, in which an unremarkable man gives his life to the system in hope of its promised rewards, and is instead discarded by it as soon at his usefulness is done. But as is very clear in Marianne Elliott and Miranda Cromwell's production this is actually the tragedy of two men, father and son, each broken by a different aspect of what the American Dream promised them. Willy Loman (Wendell Pierce) is a 63-year-old travelling salesman who's been doing the job since his teens, and returns home early from a trip after a near-miss car accident. It's one of many in recent months and his wife Linda (Sharon D. Clarke) has reason to believe they've not been accidents at all but suicide attempts.

Stage-to-screen review: Been So Long

If my theatregoing currently appears to be at something like normal human frequency that's because I've been stuck at home with bronchitis, but Netflix have filled in the gap a bit by releasing their film adaptation of Been So Long - Ché Walker and Arthur Darvill's first musical (maybe you shouldn't hold your breath for their second one to get filmed too soon) which I saw when it premiered at the Young Vic in 2009. From that original cast only Arinzé Kene has returned to play Raymond, released from prison and finding nobody to celebrate with him because while he's been away all his friends have got partners and families. Instead he ends up alone at a bar that's days away from closing, where he meets single mother Simone (Michaela Coel,) who's as attracted to him as he is to her, but has put up a lot of barriers to protect herself and her disabled daughter.

Theatre review: Misty

The only black man on the night bus - describing himself as the virus among blood cells - gets into a quick scuffle with a drunk, and finds the situation escalating until he's on the front of the local papers, being sought as Public Enemy Number One. Arinzé "chest day is his favourite day" Kene's Misty is storytelling theatre crossed with performance art and music gig, but it's also a postmodern deconstruction of itself: Backed by two musicians, Kene performs his own play, following his central character on a journey around a London he's starting not to recognise, written in a mix of poetry, rap and song. It's a familiar story of black Londoners facing discrimination and fighting against the disadvantages they grew up with, and the question is, is it too familiar? Kene bursts the bubble of the atmosphere he's created, stepping back from performer to writer and questioning why he's telling this particular story.

Theatre review: Girl From The North Country

If a Meat Loaf jukebox musical at the ENO seemed like the summer’s most eccentric bit of programming, how about a Bob Dylan jukebox musical at the Old Vic? Conor McPherson writes and directs Girl from the North Country, which I hadn’t initially planned to see but some very interesting casting convinced me otherwise. Cast mostly with actors-who-can-sing rather than predominantly musical theatre actors, I already knew the likes of Sheila Atim, Bronagh Gallagher, Jack Shalloo, Debbie Kurup, Michael Shaeffer and Karl Queensborough could sing, but there’s also a number of pleasant surprises in a show that, music aside, I didn’t quite know what to make of. Set in Depression-era Duluth, the story centres on a guest house run by Nick Laine (Ciarán Hinds,) whose wife Elizabeth (Shirley Henderson) has early-onset dementia, and whose main relief from the financial and personal pressures he faces is an affair with one of his guests, Mrs Neilsen (Kurup.)

Theatre review: One Night in Miami...

A bit of a thought out of nowhere: Not only are Professor X and Magneto on a London stage at the moment, there's also plays set in the motel rooms of both the civil rights figures who inspired those characters. This time last week it was Martin Luther King, now One Night in Miami... is spent in Malcolm X's room - again with some surprising company. Kemp Powers' play is another fictionalised version of a night that really happened: Four famous men who were also old friends, meeting on the night in 1964 that Muhammad Ali first won the heavyweight title. At the time Ali was still called Cassius Clay (Sope Dirisu,) but Malcolm X (Francois Battiste) had convinced him to join the Nation of Islam, and Clay was on the verge of going public with his support and change of name. Also there are the American football star Jim Brown (David Ajala) and singer-songwriter Sam Cooke (Arinzé Kene,) at the time best known for soppy but successful love songs.

Theatre review: God's Property

Arinze Kene's God's Property looks at what it is to be mixed-race in Britain, particularly at a time when people were still discovering what kind of racial identity that might be. It's 1982, with the Brixton riots a fairly recent memory, and Onochie (Ash Hunter,) the teenage son of a Nigerian father (now deceased) and white Irish mother, returns to his home in Deptford to find an unexpected visitor. His mother has disappeared, and in her place is his older brother Chima (Kingsley Ben-Adir,) just released from prison after 10 years, during which the rest of his family made no contact with him. Partly as a result of his brother's crime and the cloud it's left over his family in the neighbourhood, Onochie has in the intervening years stopped thinking of himelf as black, and even joined a local group of skinheads.