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.)

Theatre review: Purple Snowflakes and Titty Wanks

Not shying away from a smuttily comic title, Sarah Hanly's debut monologue Purple Snowflakes and Titty Wanks maintains a similar irreverent tone throughout, taking on eating disorders, drug abuse, death and women's social inequality with an incongruously breezy tone. Hanly herself plays Saoirse, whose story begins as a rebellious teenager in an Irish Catholic school, where on the one hand she's talking back to her teachers, exposing the hypocrisies everyone just seems to go along with and demanding a meaningful sex education. On the other hand she's not as in control as she outwardly appears, disappearing into the toilets several times a day to make herself sick. The monologue is framed as Saoirse speaking to her friend Aisling, a fellow anorexic, trying to keep her enthusiastic about life by recounting wild tales from her teens, and catching her up on what's happened since she moved to Dagenham to go to drama school.

Theatre review: Last Easter

I think Last Easter was one of the plays that had to be cancelled mid-rehearsal for the first lockdown, now getting a second chance at a London premiere at the Orange Tree. Tinuke Craig directs Bryony Lavery's four-hander about a group of friends who all know each other through their jobs in theatre - although it's June's (Naana Agyei-Ampadu) job as a lighting designer that is most frequently mined for symbolism. June has recently learned that the breast cancer she overcame has spread to her liver and is now terminal, and her friends Gash (Peter Caulfield) and Leah (Jodie Jacobs) decide to take her on an Easter road trip to France. Knowing they can fit a fourth person in the car and spread the costs, alcoholic actress Joy (Ellie Piercy) is invited as the least-worst option out of their friendship circle, but she ends up becoming connected to the core group in surprising ways.

Theatre review: Disco Pigs

I almost skipped the 20th anniversary production of Disco Pigs because I felt like I’d seen a version at the Young Vic quite recently; as it turns out that production was actually six years ago and besides, casting a Harry Potter actor I hadn’t “collected” on stage before is always a good way of making me stump up for a ticket. Enda Walsh’s two-hander uses a mixture of strong Cork accents and dialect with a convoluted, poetic style of speech that channels Joyce, Beckett and A Clockwork Orange to tell a story of two teenagers, Darren aka Pig (Colin Campbell) and Sinead aka Runt (Evanna Lynch,) who were born a second apart in the same hospital. Ever since being placed on adjacent tables they’ve been closer than real siblings, to the point in fact of isolating themselves from their families, speaking in their own language and dealing with the outside world mainly with violence.

Theatre review: Yen

Another Bruntwood Prize winner comes down to London, to the Royal Court Upstairs this time, with Anna Jordan's Yen taking us to a dark council flat in Feltham. 16-year-old Hench (Alex Austin) and his 13-year-old half-brother Bobbie (Jake Davies) are shirtless, barefoot and filthy, fending for themselves after their alcoholic mother Maggie (Sian Breckin) moved in with a new boyfriend who doesn't want them there. They left their clothes at their grandmother's to be washed, but she also ran off with a man so now they're down to one T-shirt between them for when they make a special trip outside - usually to shoplift some food. Hench sometimes has night terrors and wets the bed they share, while Bobbie has unspecified behavioural issues and is meant to go to a "unit" in the daytime; but it's the summer holidays and the boys spend their time in the flat drinking stolen beer, playing Call of Duty, watching porn and shouting at the dog, Taliban, they've got locked up in a bedroom. It's Taliban who brings a new face to the flat when concerned teenage neighbour Jenny (Annes Elwy) comes round to threaten to call the police if they don't stop mistreating the dog.

Theatre review: My Eyes Went Dark

I don't know if it's the fact that there's multiple Oresteias in London at the moment, but I saw something of that tragedy in microcosm in Matthew Wilkinson's My Eyes Went Dark. Here, too, the death of a child - or children - sets off a cycle of blame and revenge that, in a more heightened theatrical style, would have meant generations of bloodshed. But here the initial tragic events are kicked off by accident rather than cold calculation, and the avenging Fury is a man who allows his grief to become his entire personality. Nikolai (Cal MacAninch) comes from a remote part of Russia, but is working abroad when his wife and children, en route to visit him, are killed in a plane crash. Within hours of the accident, he's seeking someone to blame for his loss, and when it turns out an overworked air traffic controller made a mistake, Nikolai develops an obsession with him.