Theatre review: Blue/Orange

I've been waiting a long time to see Blue/Orange; I missed the National Theatre's original 2000 production, and subsequently the play has gained a reputation as a modern classic - any time a lacklustre new Joe Penhall play premieres, I hear people say he owes his career to this one big hit. A three-hander taking in mental illness, racial stereotyping and professional backstabbing, it takes place in a generic meeting room in a psychiatric hospital. Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) has been sectioned after a public incident involving an orange, but his 28 days of observation are up and it's time to decide if he's well enough to be released, or if he's a danger to himself and others. The diagnosis is that he has Borderline Personality Disorder, but his doctor, Bruce (Luke Norris,) believes he's actually schizophrenic, and calls in a consultant for a second opinion.

Theatre review: A Season in the Congo

The film director and Keira Knightley-enabler Joe Wright only made his theatrical debut a few months ago, but he's already looking very assured in his follow-up, A Season in the Congo. Aimé Césaire's play was written in 1966, only a few years after the events it describes, as it follows the story of Congolese independence through the eyes of its first Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba. A former beer salesman who'd sneak rhetoric against the Belgian colonists into his sales pitch, a few years later he would win the country's first democratic election. But his idealism overlooks both the Belgians' sneaky plan to hold onto financial interests in their former colony, and the tribal enmities it will exploit to do so. Within a few months he has catastrophically lost control, and inadvertently paved the way for a far from democratic Congo.

Theatre review: Trelawny of the Wells

It doesn't seem like Joe Wright is a man to do things by halves. An award-winning film director, he has no previous stage directing credits but has jumped straight in at the deep end, planning two consecutive theatre productions. First up is Arthur Wing Pinero's "love letter to the theatre," Trelawny of the Wells, opening Josie Rourke's second full year at the Donmar Warehouse. The comedy sees Rose Trelawny (Amy Morgan) as part of two different kinds of family: As Trelawny of the Wells she's a popular leading lady in a repertory company, but she's leaving the theatre to marry the well-off Arthur (Joshua Silver.) But before she's allowed to do so she must pass the test of living with his grandfather Sir William (Ron Cook) and great-aunt Trafalgar (Maggie Steed,) and her casual, actressy behaviour doesn't make fans of them.

Non-review: Playwright's Playwrights - Abide With Me

In the series' third week it's Roy Williams' turn to choose his "playwright's playwright," and he opts for Barrie Keeffe, whose work he says showed him that theatre was the right medium for him to tell stories of working-class people. Williams directs a rehearsed reading of Abide With Me, the middle play of Keeffe's 1977 Barbarians trilogy. The turnout this afternoon at the Duke of York's was better than for the first play, but unsurprisingly not on a par with last week's invasion of Cumberfans. Of course, for the sort of people who booked these readings long before the casts were announced, today's lineup of Daniel Kaluuya and Sam Swann is starry enough anyway. (The third cast member, Morgan Watkins, I don't think I've seen on stage before, although his face seems familiar from TV - I'm pretty sure he was in the most recent series of Silk.)