Theatre review: Home

Last year Amelia Sears revived the explosive Brimstone and Treacle at the Arcola's Studio 2 and now she returns there (although the venue itself has dropped down a level to the basement since she was last there) for something much more contemplative, David Storey's gently absurdist Home. It's some period after the Second World war, and two elderly men meet in a garden. Harry (Jack Shepherd) and Jack (Paul Copley) peruse the newspaper, reminisce about their lives and discuss great figures from British history to while away an autumn morning. They later meet combative Marjorie (Tessa Peake-Jones) and her friend Kathleen (Linda Broughton,) who can find a smutty double entendre in anything. As they think about going off to lunch, they start to drop hints about exactly what kind of place this peaceful garden is in the middle of: They're not quite free to come and go as they please, there's a lot of doctors around, and Kathleen isn't allowed a belt or shoelaces. The arrival of Joseph Arkley's Alfred, a clearly disturbed young man who believes himself to be a wrestler and keeps stealing the garden furniture only goes to confirm what kind of environment we're in.

Theatre review: Early Days

To commemorate the 80th birthday of writer David Storey, a rather on-the-nose choice of revival in the Finborough's Sunday-Tuesday slot, as his play Early Days deals with extreme old age. A rather odd little character piece, it looks at the last days of Kitchen (Simon Molloy,) a notable post-War politician whose career never reached the peak it was expected to thanks to, as he frequently laments, "one 25-minute speech and a fifteen-second interview." Now he's seriously ill - perhaps much more so than he even realises, with only a few months left to live - and spends much of his time in the garden of his daughter Mathilda (Abigail Bond) and her wealthy business leader husband Benson (Andrew McDonald.) Here he reflects on past glories, his childhood, and his time with his dead wife, to anyone who'll listen.