Theatre review: Gloria

I try to write reviews without major spoilers in them but it can be a minefield: Gloria is a play that I could try to talk about without mentioning the twist halfway through, but it’s so crucial to what the play’s about there’d be little point writing about it at all if I didn’t at least allude to it. So I’ll start with the story’s setup in the first paragraph, and after that read at your own risk if you’re planning on seeing the show. We start with a bitter, and not all that funny, office sitcom: Kae Alexander, Colin Morgan and Ellie Kendrick play PAs to various editors in the New York headquarters of a national magazine, with Bayo Gbadamosi as an intern who’s been kept deliberately far from any useful work just in case he develops an interest in working there for real, and gets in the way of the others’ ambitions. But Michael Longhurst’s production sets their realistic cubicles in front of chipboard walls that overtly remind us this is a theatrical setting; and besides the writer is Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, and anyone who saw An Octoroon will know he likes to play around with form. SPOILER ALERT after the text cut.

Theatre review: I See You

It must be a strange time to be Noma Dumezweni; a couple of months ago she was stepping into a lead role with zero notice, and she's another couple of months away from a potentially career-changing (and joyously Mail-annoying) role in Harry Potter. Her job between the two is positively low-key in comparison, but would be the high point of most people's year - she steps from centre stage to behind the scenes for her directorial debut (this interview suggests she basically says yes to offers first and worries about how she'll pull it off later.) You can see why the Royal Court would think of her for South African playwright Mongiwekhaya's (one name, like Cher) I See You: Dumezweni's family left South Africa when she was a child to flee Apartheid, and that's also what Ben's (Bayo Gbadamosi) family did when he was three years old. But now that he's 19 Ben's returned to study Law in a country that's no longer a war zone; or so he thinks, but for Officer Buthelezi (Desmond Dube) there's still a war going on, and Ben's the enemy.

Theatre review: Mad About the Boy

Gbolahan Obisesan's playlet Mad About the Boy offers a short, sharp look at the current generation of teenagers and centres on the idea of respect: Dad (Jason Barnett) belongs to a generation who believed you should give respect; his Boy (Bayo Gbadamosi) belongs to one that demands it categorically. Somewhere between them is Man (Simon Darwen,) who says his generation earned their respect. Man is the school counselor, earnestly trying to help the Boy whose behaviour is getting increasingly out of control; his single father seems to be just as much in need of help to figure out what the hell to do with his son. Obisesan gives us a series of scenes between two or all three of the men, employing a risky form of dramatic poetry that sees the cast speedily alternating short lines, a technique with the potential to go horribly wrong.