Theatre review: Chicken Dust

The conditions in which animals meant for cheap food are raised are something we probably wouldn't want to think about too much; but Ben Weatherill's play Chicken Dust isn't so much about the birds themselves, as about how the lives of the people who work there aren't much more fun than those of the doomed chickens. A student who's had to grab the first job going when his father gets ill, Tim (Christopher Hancock) arrives at a Leicestershire farm that's been taken over by a large corporation. Chicks that have been hatched elsewhere are transported there to be raised and fattened up in a barn, and when they're ready for slaughter it's his job to catch them. He joins a team two of whom, Freddie (Roger Alborough) and Val (Paddy Navin) had their own farms before falling on hard times and having to sell out to the same sort of company that now pays them minimum wage.

Theatre review: The Dreaming

No, The Dreaming isn't a musical theatre adaptation of The Sandman - I don't even know if you should feel relieved or disappointed by that. In fact Howard Goodall and Charles Hart's musical transplants the story of A Midsummer Night's Dream to a rural part of England in 1913. The names have changed but the plotlines are much the same: Charlotte (Holly Julier) has run away to marry Alexander (Alastair Hill) followed by David (Joshua Tonks) who also loves her, and Jennifer (Rachel Flynn,) who loves David. Meanwhile the local vicar (Michael Chance) is bringing together a group of locals to perform a mummers' play about Saint George slaying the dragon. Both groups find their lives complicated when they get caught in the middle of an argument between Sylvia (Daisy Tonge) and Angel (Christopher Hancock,) leaders of the magical Woodlanders.