Theatre review: The Lesson

For a lauded and influential playwright, Eugène Ionesco is so rarely performed in the UK that me catching a second production in 2022 means it must be a bit of a big year for him in London. In Southwark Playhouse's Little space, Icarus Theatre brings The Lesson to life with the creative use of projections that turn captions for the hearing-impaired into the stuff of nightmares. The Pupil (Hazel Caulfield) arrives, excited, at the apartment of the famed Professor (Jerome Ngonadi,) who she hopes will help her prepare for a Doctorate (preferably all the Doctorates.) She already knows three of the four seasons so this should just be a formality. The Professor starts her on arithmetic before moving on to linguistics, despite the warnings of his stern housekeeper Marie (Julie Stark) that this never goes well for him.

Theatre review: Weald

As well as the Finborough's numerous official remits, Neil McPherson does also seem to have a fondness for scheduling rural dramas. The latest is Daniel Foxsmith's Weald, set in what used to be a large farm, but over the years much of it has been sold off, and Sam (David Crellin) is the last of the family that owned it for a couple of centuries. What he's got left is a stables, currently housing eight ageing horses and just about enough work to keep him busy, but when a young man arrives asking for a job he can't turn him down: Jim (Dan Parr) worked for him as a teenager before leaving to try his luck in London. He's come back up North now fleeing something (the same something every young man in a show I've seen recently seems to be running to or from) and, having been with Jim's father when he died, Sam's developed something of a surrogate father/son relationship with Jim.

Theatre review: Quasimodo

Quasimodo means "unfinished," which is ironic because this is how Lionel Bart left his musical adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame on his death, despite having worked on it for decades. As a result, apart from the odd concert performance, the show remained unseen until Robert Chevara's production at the King's Head. The writer of Oliver! may have swapped Dickens' London for Victor Hugo's Paris, but there's still an unmistakeable cockernee sound to the songs, especially the ensemble numbers. Abandoned by his mother as a baby, the physically deformed Quasimodo is taken in by Archdeacon Frollo (James Wolstenholme.) Given the job of bell-ringer at Notre Dame Cathedral, and making his home in the bell tower as well, by the time he's grown up Quasimodo (Steven Webb) is deaf in addition to his twisted bones and scars.