Theatre review: Tartuffe, the Imposter

Molière’s religious con-man Tartuffe has been around a lot in the past year, but for various reasons (having bronchitis when I was meant to be seeing it in Stratford-upon-Avon; avoiding the Theatre Royal Haymarket like the plague) the National’s is the first of the current crop I’ve caught. And certainly as adapted by John Donnelly and directed by Blanche McIntyre the play shows why so many people have chosen it at this particular moment. Robert Jones’ set is a garishly opulent living room that nods to the play’s origins at Versailles, but the action’s been relocated to Highgate where Orgon (Kevin Doyle,) who made his fortune in unspecified dubious ways, lives with his mother Pernelle (Susan Engel,) daughter Mariane (Kitty Archer,) son Damis (Enyi Okoronkwo,) second wife Elmire (Future Dame Olivia Williams) and her brother Cleante (Hari Dhillon.) All except Pernelle are currently horrified at the puritanical turn the household has taken.

Theatre review: Dinner With Friends

Like many of the Pulitzer winners I've seen before, Dinner With Friends - Donald Margulies' play won the literary prize in 2000 - concerns itself with middle class American couples spending time in each others' homes. Unlike the others, it isn't actually about racism, or indeed any subject larger than the relationships we see on stage. Food writer Gabe (Shaun Dooley) and his wife Karen (Sara Stewart) are having a friend and her children round for dinner, giving her a blow-by-blow account of their recent holiday in Italy. It's not the relentlessness of their narrative that makes Beth (Finty Williams) suddenly burst into tears though: She said the reason her husband didn't join them at the dinner party was that he was away on business, but in fact he's left her for another woman, and they're now planning to get a divorce.

Theatre review: Disgraced

An explosive approach to race relations seems to be a popular way to impress the Pulitzer judges; this year's winner in the drama category was Ayad Akhtar's Disgraced, which sees a dinner party for two interracial couples go horribly wrong. Amir (Hari Dhillon) is a reasonably successful corporate lawyer, a Pakistani-American who changed his last name from Abdullah to Kapoor to put people off the scent that he was raised a Muslim. His white wife Emily (Kirsty Bushell) is an artist; in contrast to Amir who is vocal about having rejected his family's religion, Emily makes paintings that overtly acknowledge the influence of Islam on Western art. Their marriage seems pretty happy on the surface, but their disagreements over religion are a recurring issue - Emily's insistence that Islam is not inherently hate-filled coming up against her husband's argument that his upbringing says otherwise.