Theatre review: Skeleton Crew

Michael Longhurst's run at the Donald and Margot Warehouse ends with something of a whimper, as the original play scheduled to close his tenure had to be cancelled - I think for contractual reasons - and instead director Matthew Xia was given Dominique Morisseau's Skeleton Crew. It's a play that does feel connected to the last few years at the venue, which have included two Lynn Nottage plays about the decline of American industry in the 2000s, but while the themes are similar Morisseau doesn't quite have the spark to her writing that elevates Nottage. Set in the break room of the last small car factory left in Detroit in 2008, the workforce have been pared back to a bare minimum but the four employees we meet are trying to convince themselves that the factory's closure in the next couple of years isn't as inevitable as it looks.

Theatre review: Sunset Baby

Dominique Morisseau's Sunset Baby is the final play in Christopher Haydon's inaugural season at the Gate, entitled "RESIST!" and looking at revolutions and the people behind them. But it also seems to me a good bridge to the already-announced next season, themed around "Aftermath," as it looks at how the crucial figures in an uprising deal with the rest of their lives when the fight that defined them no longer takes up their whole lives - especially where it leaves their family relationships. Ashanti X was a leading figure in the Black Power movement, but she died a crack addict. Her daughter Nina (Michelle Asante) is a drug dealer and thief whose only legacy from her mother is a collection of letters she wrote to Nina's father Kenyatta after he left them, but never posted. Now Kenyatta (Ben Onwukwe) has returned to claim the letters.