Theatre review: Machinal

The Almeida’s current season of female playwrights now looks back to 1928 for a play whose expressionist style places it very firmly in that time, but whose script often feels almost unnervingly up-to-date. In Machinal, Sophie Treadwell despairs at the world treating all people like part of a machine, but there’s no question it’s women’s role in that machine that’s the particular target. Initially known only as Miss A, later revealed to be called Helen, Emily Berrington plays a young woman who works as a stenographer in a New York office where she doesn’t fit in, largely due to being the only one who openly admits she feels like she’s wasting her life there. Not that this deters the company vice-president, Jones (Jonathan Livingstone,) who proposes to her. Helen flinches at his touch, but she knows marriage is the expected next step in her life, and a wealthy husband would get her out of her 9-5 job, so she accepts.

Theatre review: Pack

Straight on to the Papatango winner, which this year is Louise Monaghan's Pack. We're in a community centre in Leeds (Olivia Altaras has designed a set that serves both this and Everyday Maps For Everyday Use well) where maths teacher Dianna (Denise Black) evidently doesn't get enough teaching in her day job, so holds a class on bridge for beginners in the evenings. Her students are Deb (Angela Lonsdale,) a brash widow who's gone up in the world since collecting her husband's life insurance; Stephie (Sarah Smart,) her slightly dim-witted friend; and Nasreen (Amita Dhiri,) a doctor Deb seems a bit sniffy towards at first. As we get to know the women in the ensuing weeks of card-playing, their outside lives start to encroach on their new friendships, as a BNP rally approaches and the politics of the women, as well as their husbands', come under the spotlight.