Theatre review: Night City

Max Wilkinson's Night City, which premieres at Southwark Playhouse Borough's Little Theatre, follows three London workers in the gig economy, and opens by warning us that one of them will wind up dead by the end of the story: Jack (Jack Ambrose) works for a fictional rideshare company, and despite finding out he has a congenital heart condition is, at the start of the play at least, the one out of the trio who most embraces the stressful, intense conditions of working on a zero-hours contract. One of his passengers is Tia (Bex Smith,) an aspiring writer who's only recently arrived in the city, and who's making ends meet at a café chain. The two start a casual relationship that grows into something more serious. Less directly connected to them is Tamara (Helena Pipe,) a carer whose employer has recently been bought out by a firm looking to maximise profits.

Theatre review: The Lonely Londoners

Roy Williams' The Lonely Londoners is the first stage adaptation of Sam Selvon's classic novel of the Windrush generation, and he makes a concise, intense evening out of its sweeping journey through the lives of six people who've arrived in London from Trinidad in the 1950s. At the centre of the group is Moses (Gamba Cole,) one of a trio of early arrivals who've developed a healthy cynicism after years of struggling to find and keep work, and experiencing casual and not-so-casual racism in a mother country they'd been told was desperately in need of their help. To his irritation, Moses has found himself in the position of fixer for the community, someone newcomers have heard about and go to for help. He tries to prepare wide-eyed newcomers for the reality of life as a black Londoner, and they don't come much more wide-eyed and optimistic than Galahad (Romario Simpson.)