Theatre review: Machinal

The Almeida’s current season of female playwrights now looks back to 1928 for a play whose expressionist style places it very firmly in that time, but whose script often feels almost unnervingly up-to-date. In Machinal, Sophie Treadwell despairs at the world treating all people like part of a machine, but there’s no question it’s women’s role in that machine that’s the particular target. Initially known only as Miss A, later revealed to be called Helen, Emily Berrington plays a young woman who works as a stenographer in a New York office where she doesn’t fit in, largely due to being the only one who openly admits she feels like she’s wasting her life there. Not that this deters the company vice-president, Jones (Jonathan Livingstone,) who proposes to her. Helen flinches at his touch, but she knows marriage is the expected next step in her life, and a wealthy husband would get her out of her 9-5 job, so she accepts.

Theatre review: Dead Funny

Comedians Benny Hill and Frankie Howerd died within days of each other; it's during that week in 1992 that Dead Funny takes place, so it's no surprise that 2016, with its bloodbath of the national treasures, would be a good time for Terry Johnson to revive his play. It's a pretty extreme comedy-drama that looks at an imploding marriage through the prism of the silliest kind of classic British comedy. Richard (Rufus Jones) and Ellie (Katherine Parkinson) haven't had sex in 18 months because Richard says he's lost all interest in it. They're seeing a couples therapist who's prescribed an hour every other night of them gradually getting used to touching each other again, even if it's in a non-sexual way, but even this seems to make Richard uncomfortable. What he's much more enthusiastic about is his love of classic comedy, and his position as chairman of the Dead Funny Society, who share his passion. When the news of Benny Hill's death is announced, they plan a tribute party.

Theatre review: Children's Children

When I'm stuck on how to start a review, a brief overview of the play is the usual standby, but that's not very useful when I have no idea what the play in question is meant to be. Fortunately, during the third act of Matthew Dunster's Children's Children, when the characters all started shouting at each other in a kitchen after a funeral, I figured it out: It's a soap opera. Michael (Ensemble^TM alumnus Darrell D'Silva) is a cheesy TV presenter with a hit Saturday night game show. He's known best friend Gordon (Trevor Fox) and Gordon's wife Sally (Sally Rogers) since drama school, but the latter pair have never had much success as actors. Now in middle age, Gordon's situation has got so bad that he has to beg his wealthy friend for money. By the second act, Gordon and Sally have pretty much moved into Michael's summer house in Dorset, not telling him that their daughter Effie (Emily Berrington,) her husband Castro (John MacMillan) and their new baby are also living there. But this time it's Michael who'll be in dire straits and needing his friends' support.