Stage-to-screen review: Been So Long

If my theatregoing currently appears to be at something like normal human frequency that's because I've been stuck at home with bronchitis, but Netflix have filled in the gap a bit by releasing their film adaptation of Been So Long - Ché Walker and Arthur Darvill's first musical (maybe you shouldn't hold your breath for their second one to get filmed too soon) which I saw when it premiered at the Young Vic in 2009. From that original cast only Arinzé Kene has returned to play Raymond, released from prison and finding nobody to celebrate with him because while he's been away all his friends have got partners and families. Instead he ends up alone at a bar that's days away from closing, where he meets single mother Simone (Michaela Coel,) who's as attracted to him as he is to her, but has put up a lot of barriers to protect herself and her disabled daughter.

Theatre review: The Caretaker

The Matthew Warchus era might have kicked off with a promise to take the "old" out of the Old Vic, but so far this year at least it's felt as if there's still plenty of cobwebs in the building, with a couple of ponderous productions of classics. For the second show in a row there's a deeply old-fashioned two intervals, which feels particularly perverse when it's Pinter - a writer with whom even one interval usually feels like an extravagance. At least they're only 15-minute breaks this time, but it still pushes The Caretaker up to the three-hour mark. Warchus himself directs Timothy Spall as Davies, a homeless racist given a bed for the night by the slow-witted Aston (Daniel Mays.) But despite his effusive thanks and protestations that he'll be leaving very soon, Davies quickly makes himself comfortable and shows no sign of actually leaving the flat.

Theatre review: Ah, Wilderness!

The Young Vic website describes Ah, Wilderness! as "Eugene O'Neill's most delightful play," a field that with the best will in the world can't have that many runners in it. Elsewhere I've seen the blunter "Eugene O'Neill's only intentional comedy." It is a surprisingly sweet affair though, something of a love letter not just to a particular woman in the playwright's life, but to young love itself. It's the Fourth of July and an extended New England family gather at the home of local newspaper editor Nat Miller (Martin Marquez.) The obvious stand-in for a young O'Neill is the middle son, George MacKay's Richard, a likeably recognisable emo teenager in Natalie Abrahami's modern-dress production. Fond of reading the works of European playwrights and poets like Wilde and Shaw - much to the concern of his mother Essie (Janie Dee) - Richard has been sending overwrought love letters to a local girl. When her father catches on, he order her to break it off immediately.