Theatre review: Cable Street

The 1936 Battle of Cable Street in East London is known as the biggest anti-fascist protest on British soil. It's a piece of English history that can still be looked back on with pride at a time when most re-examinations of the past don't see it hold up too well, so it remains a popular subject. It also marks a significant moment of unity between the Jewish and Irish communities that until then might not have necessarily been on the same side, so there are bound to be many people in both those modern-day communities who have personal family stories about it. Which is all to say that when Southwark Playhouse put Tim Gilvin (music & lyrics) and Alex Kanefsky's (book) musical premiere Cable Street on sale it sold out the entire run before it had even opened, an impressive enough feat at the moment for an Off West End show with no star casting.

Theatre review: Jews. In Their Own Words.

When the Royal Court announced Jonathan Freedland's Jews. In Their Own Words. as the opener for its autumn season, my brain autocorrected the title to Jews. Please Don't Boycott Us. After last year's antisemitism fiasco it was pretty obvious that this was an attempt at a mea culpa from the venue, and while there's definitely something to be said for not dragging their feet about addressing the issue, ten months since that happened seems a very quick turnaround for a theatre where scripts can percolate for years. (For anyone not up to speed: Rare Earth Mettle was meant to feature a shifty billionaire called Hershel Fink. Having seen the play, I'd say playwright Al Smith was probably going for something with the vague cadences of "Elon Musk," but he actually landed on a hugely stereotypical Jewish name, paired with an equally stereotypical moneybags character. When the play opened in previews and caused offence, the name was changed, but further controversy came with reports that some people had highlighted the connotations and been ignored.)

Theatre review: The Child in the Snow

Writer Piers Torday has become a regular contributor of the Christmas show at Wilton's Music Hall ever since The Box of Delights, and with the return of director Justin Audibert and designer Tom Piper this should be a team that knows its way around London's most atmospheric venue, and the sort of story that works there. And in a couple of story points you can see why Elizabeth Gaskell’s short ghost story "The Old Nurse's Story" made them think of the Victorian music hall which in recent years has seemed much safer from demolition than it used to be, but whose partial restoration means it still easily conjures up the thought that it might be haunted. Unfortunately the resulting play, The Child in the Snow, does nothing to live up to the setting - in fact the only ghostly thing about it is how insubstantial it feels.

Stage-to-screen review: Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare's Globe / Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank)

I mentioned recently that after 2020's overload of Romeo and Juliets failed to materialise for obvious reasons, it was due to turn up in 2021 in largely digital form. But before a rather odd-looking green screen affair and the National's repurposing of the Lyttelton into a TV studio turn up, there's a version already available on YouTube, and free to view (as ever, donations are encouraged,) until the end of next month. Last year I had my first experience of the Globe's Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank strand of shows for schools with the 2020 production of Macbeth, and now for their 2019 offering, and a 90-minute edit can't be a bad call for a play I tend to lose my patience with, can it? Certainly playing the story at speed can only accentuate the way Romeo (Nathan Welsh) and Juliet (Charlotte Beaumont) decide they're in love with each other having barely met.

Theatre review: The Duck House

In May 2009, a story broke about the biggest Parliamentary scandal in... well, in about a week, realistically. They're not exactly thin on the ground, Parliamentary scandals. The one we're looking at here is the expenses scandal, that saw Members of Parliament abusing their right to claim business expenses from taxpayers' money. Eventually the news would settle on the biggest issue, of MPs from all parties using their need for two residences (one in their constituency and one near Westminster) as a pure money-spinner. But initially all the attention was on the irrelevant receipts being charged to public funds, from the petty - 1p for a phone call - to the surreal - a moat, and a glittering toilet seat. The most notorious item an MP attempted (albeit unsuccessfully) to claim for was The Duck House.

Theatre review: Untitled Matriarch Play (or Seven Sisters)

I know people who were hoping to skip the Royal Court's Weekly Rep season (when you're a theatre geek there's enough shows to keep up with without one venue launching a new one each week) but had to relent and book a couple of shows when they saw the quality of the ensemble. And this cast (who it's hard to believe were in their first public performance after only a week's rehearsal) are once again saving an evening that could have gone very differently in the penultimate show of the season, Untitled Matriarch Play (or Seven Sisters.) And a lot of the time Nikole Beckwith's work is as bizarre as you'd expect from a play that has an alternate title despite not having a first title. Also, there's seven women in the cast and most of their characters are related, but only four of them are sisters.

Theatre review: Mint

Director Clare Lizzimore tries her hand at playwrighting (and immediately makes it into my good books by not attempting to pull double duty and direct it herself.) Instead Caroline Steinbeis directs Mint, this week's offering from the Royal Court's rep season. Mint is the name of the colour of paint in Alan's jail cell, and he chose it himself - one of the few times during his lengthy incarceration that he had any small measure of control. The exact nature of Alan's crime is revealed later on, but we know from the off that it's something pretty serious - he's behind bars for several years and he starts off in a maximum security prison, although good behaviour sees him moved elsewhere down the line. Sam Troughton may never have been more intense than as the man whose supposed rehabilitation we follow from the end of the last millennium into the start of this one.

Theatre review: In Basildon

You couldn't accuse David Eldridge of shying away from the darker side of life. After last year's children's-TV-presenter-gets-heroin-habit fun and games at the Almeida, he returns to the Royal Court and a reconfigured Downstairs theatre where Len (Phil Cornwell) is on his deathbed with prostate cancer, in his living room In Basildon. The scene is set for a dysfunctional family reunion as Len's sister Doreen (Linda Bassett) has been living in his house for decades, but she's not spoken to younger sister Maureen (Ruth Sheen) for the last 20 years. Though the details are sketchy at first, it's clear money and ownership of the house are at the root of the family feud. Doreen's son Barry (Lee Ross) and Maureen's daughter Shelley (Jade Williams, briefly allowed out of the Globe and not even required to vomit on anyone) try their best not to let the hard feelings carry on to their generation. Once Len is dead, things don't get any easier as it turns out he's recently changed his will, and the new arrangements could leave everyone in very different circumstances than they expected.