Theatre review: My Master Builder

Henrik Ibsen seems to be the current favourite classic playwright for modern writers to rewrite, rework and reimagine, in plays billed as inspired by his work rather than straightforward adaptations. And I'm sure sooner or later we'll get something that genuinely feels like it's reinventing the wheel, but right now I'd settle for something I can see the point of: Lila Raicek's My Master Builder isn't that. Henry (Ewan McGregor) is a superstar architect (or "starchitect,") who has just completed work on a new chapel adjacent to his weekend home in the Hamptons. On the tenth anniversary of his son's death, the building is to be officially unveiled as a memorial to the child, and his publisher wife Elena (Kate Fleetwood) is organising a launch party. As she plans the evening with her assistant Kaia (Mirren Mack) she reveals a somewhat twisted sense of mischief in some of the invitations and seating arrangements, but one guest has been invited for an even darker purpose.

Theatre review: One Night in Miami...

A bit of a thought out of nowhere: Not only are Professor X and Magneto on a London stage at the moment, there's also plays set in the motel rooms of both the civil rights figures who inspired those characters. This time last week it was Martin Luther King, now One Night in Miami... is spent in Malcolm X's room - again with some surprising company. Kemp Powers' play is another fictionalised version of a night that really happened: Four famous men who were also old friends, meeting on the night in 1964 that Muhammad Ali first won the heavyweight title. At the time Ali was still called Cassius Clay (Sope Dirisu,) but Malcolm X (Francois Battiste) had convinced him to join the Nation of Islam, and Clay was on the verge of going public with his support and change of name. Also there are the American football star Jim Brown (David Ajala) and singer-songwriter Sam Cooke (Arinzé Kene,) at the time best known for soppy but successful love songs.

Theatre review: The Witness

The Royal Court has been in the news for all the wrong reasons in the last week, what with the Jez Butterworth debacle, and them freezing their loyal friends and members out of advance bookings for £10 Mondays Upstairs (look out for the next podcast to find out how much of my extended rant on the subject made the cut.) It's a shame that this rather overshadows a prime example of how the theatre got such a loyal fanbase in the first place, in an Upstairs play about a difficult subject, but one which creates one of the most compelling human dramas on the London stage at the moment. Following her hit debut Mogadishu¹ last year, Vivienne Franzmann's second play The Witness looks at the world of war photographers, people who bring atrocities to the attention of the wider public, but at a cost both to themselves and the victims. It does so through an intimate family drama, Lizzie Clachan's ingenious in-the-round set putting the audience by the walls, behind the bookcases and up the stairs of a North London family home.