Theatre review: The Phlebotomist

Ella Road’s imperfect but accomplished debut The Phlebotomist opens with a real piece of news footage, as a doctor is interviewed about genomics, the science of using DNA testing to predict someone’s future health; enthusiastically, she tells us how hospitals keeping records of everyone’s projected physical and mental health would be a boon to the medical profession and help treat problems before they even occur. Over the course of the next two hours we get more footage appearing on the screens with every scene change, this time scripted clips that build the dystopian future Road has created with this technology as its basis: Blood tests aren’t, at first, compulsory, but they become common and increasingly expected. The complex data collected is simplified to a score out of ten, and soon everything from job applications to dating profiles revolves around this, with anyone ranked as “sub” unlikely to get a mortgage, a decent job or a partner who isn’t as predisposed to an early death as they are.

Theatre review: The Massacre at Paris

Surviving only in a short, probably bastardised version that sounds not unlike Hamlet's Bad Quarto, The Massacre at Paris sees Christopher Marlowe treat Catholics with much the same tact and sensitivity as he did Jews. Based on very recent French history that would have still been gossiped about when it premiered, it sees a marriage between Catholic Princess Margaret (Ella Road) and Protestant Henry of Navarre (Rhys Bevan) as only the pretense of reconciliation between the warring nobles. In fact it riles hardline Catholics so much they plot a bloody massacre of Protestants, but this isn't enough for the power-hungry Duke of Guise (John Gregor) and Queen Mother (Kristin Milward.) They dispatch with the King and Queen and install child-king Henry III (James Askill) as a puppet ruler. But as he gets older Henry has his own style of ruling that's less than pious, so Guise continues his plotting to get power into his own hands once and for all.