Theatre review: Yellowman

There are plenty of stories about people whose fates are sealed by the colour of their skin, but Dael Orlandersmith offers one where every tiny difference in pigmentation seems to have a specific, unavoidable path attached to it. As part of a Genesis Award Nancy Medina directs a revival of 2002 play Yellowman, which is part love story, part memoir, but overwhelmingly about prejudice and class distinctions based on skin tone within the black community. Eugene and Alma both grew up in South Carolina, each of them with one parent darker-skinned than the other. Eugene (Christopher Colquhoun) has taken after his lighter-skinned mother and so is a colour referred to (usually with some resentment) as “high yellow-red;” Alma (Nicola Hughes) also looks like her mother, which means she’s much darker and has to put up with a lifelong tirade from her alcoholic mother about how fat, ugly and black she is.

Theatre review: The Believers

Cynical, spiky and driven to the end of their tethers by their difficult child Grace, if Joff (Christopher Colquhoun) and Marianne (Eileen Walsh) had any belief in god it would be pushed to the limit by their home getting flooded. In this hour of need they're taken in for the night by the neighbours they barely know: Ollie (Richard Mylan) and Maud (Penny Layden) are religious and new age-ey, and to complete the contrast their own daughter Joyous seems to be practically perfect in every way. Although they're polite because of their circumstances, the two couples' differences, especially with regard to faith, make for an instant dislike. But a few drinks and joints later Joff and Marianne allow Maud and Ollie to perform a simple blessing over Grace that they believe will calm her down. It does, but the effect on both families ends up being a lot more drastic than expected.

Theatre review: The Color (sic) Purple

Another Broadway musical that shares a title and subject matter with a famous film, except this time the two actually do come from the same source, Alice Walker's novel The Color (sic) Purple. Spanning several decades of the 20th century it first introduces its heroine Celie (Cynthia Erivo) in 1914 at the age of 14, already pregnant for the second time as a result of being raped by her stepfather, both children taken away to mysterious ends. She's soon married off to the tyrannical widower Mister (Christopher Colquhoun,) mainly to raise his kids. Celie is a mousy creature whose only experience of how women should behave to men is cowering obedience, so behaves accordingly to the fearsome Mister, who soon bans her from ever again contacting her beloved sister Nettie (Abiona Omonua.) But over the years she meets other women with a much more independent attitude, and over the years she blossoms.

Theatre Review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Open Air Theatre)

Alternating with Ragtime at Regent's Park is a play that's almost synonymous with the open air venue, although this take on A Midsummer Night's Dream is far from a frothy, family picnic affair. Taking his cue from the memoirs of Mikey Walsh, who provides the programme notes, Matthew Dunster's production is a Big Fat Gypsy Dream, relocating the action to a caravan site that looks set to be flattened to make way for a Westfield-style shopping centre. In a subculture where arranged marriages still exist, Hermia (Hayley Gallivan) loves Lysander (Tom Padley) but her father wants her to marry Demetrius (Kingsley Ben Adir.) If she doesn't comply, her father has asked the gypsy king Theseus, himself about to get married, to exact a harsh punishment. Hermia flees with Lysander, but her friend Helena (Rebecca Oldfield) is in unrequited love with Demetrius, and they follow the pair into the woods - where they get caught up in the magical games of the fairies who live there.