Theatre review: The New Real

My relationship with David Edgar's plays has been mixed: I think my still-strong memories of enjoying Pentecost in the '90s make me always want to give his new work a try, but the RSC's most-commissioned modern writer was also responsible for the notoriously dreary Written on the Heart, and after last week's meh Here In America I felt a bit of trepidation towards the second of his premieres this autumn. The New Real is also described by the blurb as both "epic" and "panoramic," so they're really making sure you know it's going to be long. Still, my first show at Stratford's The Other Place since it was serving as The Courtyard twelve years ago turns out to be flawed, but worth checking out. Edgar returns to Eastern Europe and an unnamed former Soviet state, in a story spanning the last 22 years and looking at the question that has been worrying many political playwrights: How did politics move so far to the Right and so far from reality in that time?

Theatre review: Here in America

It seems a long time since I saw a David Edgar play and all of a sudden he's got two new ones out; first up at the Orange Tree is Here In America, a look at the friendship and professional relationship between playwright Arthur Miller and his regular director Elia Kazan, and how it was strained by the House Un-American Activities Committee, which called them both to testify with very different outcomes. Although the play makes no disguise of who the characters are, they all go by nicknames: Kazan goes by Gadg, short for Gadget (Shaun Evans,) who's invited Art (Michael Aloni) to his house to look at cheese, and to confess to him that he's about to go in front of HUAC to name members of their theatre company who were communists alongside him. Of the two, Art was never actually a card-carrying party member, but he's the one who's still held onto the strongest anti-capitalist beliefs, as well as the sense of honour in not betraying his friends.

Theatre review: Written on the Heart

I was due to see Written on the Heart in a couple of weeks' time, but as the show is now closing on the 19th due to poor ticket sales my trip had to be rescheduled, and today's matinee was the only performance I could make. Years ago I enjoyed Pentecost, another RSC commission from writer David Edgar, so I was optimistic about this one, a belated entry to the 2011 celebrations of the King James Bible's 400th anniversary. Spanning 80 years, it focuses on Lancelot Andrewes (Oliver Ford Davies,) the Bishop of Ely and one of the senior members of the team trying to agree on an English translation of scripture in 1610; and the debt he owes to William Tyndale (Stephen Boxer,) who we see in a Flanders cell in 1536, awaiting execution for producing his own, colloquial translation of the Bible.