Theatre review: The Whip

It's been a lacklustre Swan season so while its final production, Juliet Gilkes Romero's The Whip, isn't without flaws I still found it the strongest offering. The title comes from the nominal lead's position, as Alexander Boyd (Richard Clothier) is the Chief Whip for the ruling Whig party in the early 1830s, but as the issue that defines his time in Parliament is the abolition of slavery in British colonies the title inevitably has a much more sinister double meaning. Boyd's initial mission is actually the reform of child labour in British factories, but he's diverted onto the abolition bill that's been dragging through Parliament for years. Slavery might never have been legal in the UK itself but the Empire's wealth comes from allowing it to continue in its colonies, and the West Indies are its last bastion. Finalising a deal hasn't been easy because too many politicians have a personal interest: Boyd is chosen to champion the cause as one of the few MPs not to be a slaveowner himself.

Theatre review: King John (RSC / Swan)

In a theatrical landscape experimenting excitedly with gender-flipped, gender-blind and gender-neutral casting, it's good for a company to find its own niche, although the RSC's take seems to be an eccentric one: Casting women in male title roles, but largely going with the ones male actors weren't in any particular hurry to play in the first place. So a couple of years ago there was a female Cymbeline, and now the unloved - both in-universe and within the canon - King John, as Rosie Sheehy takes the nominal lead in Eleanor Rhode's production. John - the gender-flipped characters are largely given dresses in Max Johns' design but the pronouns stick to what Shakespeare wrote - has inherited the throne from his much more popular brother Richard the Lionheart, along with the usual convoluted politics with England and France fighting over claims to each other's kingdom.