Theatre review: The House of Bernarda Alba

The National Theatre's biggest stages are currently giving a lot of actresses work, although neither of the titular roles are exactly feminist icons: If anything the Grand High Witch is a sweetheart compared to the matriarch of The House of Bernarda Alba. For Rebecca Frecknall's first show at the National, designer Merle Hensel supplies one of the multilevel buildings that fit so well on the Lyttelton stage, and while the script and costumes keep things in the rural 1930s Spain of the original, the pale green institutional set of little rooms piled on top of each other is a bit too on-the-nose, but an effective metaphor for the prison Bernarda (Harriet Walter) has created for herself and her family: Recently widowed for the second time, she declares that she and her five daughters will observe eight years of mourning for her husband, never to leave the grounds of the house without her permission.

Theatre review: Under the Blue Sky

AMATEUR PRODUCTION DISCLAIMER: As usual, I like to point out that drama school presentations are officially classified as amateur productions; and as usual, I'm going to ignore that in the way I review this, as everyone involved could be professional very soon.

And so to one of my occasional trips to LAMDA's public performances, where I try to spot stars of the future and (spoiler alert!) fail miserably. David Eldridge's Under the Blue Sky premiered in 2000, and I last saw it when it was revived in the West End ten years ago, but there are moments when you can see the through-line in Eldridge's writing with his most recent hit, Beginning. A triptych of loosely connected scenes all involving teachers at an Essex public school, Under the Blue Sky opens with Nick (Barney Fishwick,) who works at a rough East London school, inviting his best friend and colleague Helen (Helen Reuben) for a meal to tell her he's planning to take a job at the private school. For the idealistic Helen this is a blow as she believes they can do the most good where they are, but her anger is really down to the fact that she was hoping the dinner was about something else - she's been not-so-secretly in love with Nick for years, and thought he was going to confess he feels the same.