Theatre review: Small Island

This time last year Rufus Norris strayed out of his comfort zone for his big Olivier stage production with notoriously disastrous consequences, but he's back to much more familiar territory now for a big emotional, political epic that spans years, continents and clashing cultures. Helen Edmundson adapts Andrea Levy's Small Island, whose story about the Windrush generation has become topical again in recent years. Its three narrators are initially separated by an ocean, but chance and the Second World War will throw them together in life-changing ways: First up we meet Hortense (Leah Harvey,) a teacher in a remote Jamaican village whose romantic feelings about her cousin Michael (CJ Beckford) are crushed so abruptly it leaves her cold, spiky and pragmatic to the point of calculating; while she stays in Jamaica, Michael goes to England to join the war effort.

Theatre review: Queen Anne

It'd be a bit optimistic to think it signals 2016 sorting out theatre's notorious gender imbalance, but I've started the year with a trio of plays centring on women. The third is Queen Anne, Helen Edmundson's attempt to restore the memory of a largely forgotten monarch, whose name nowadays is mostly likely to be followed by that of a piece of furniture. The last of the Stuarts, even before her reign began its central issue was the succession, and England was determined enough to avoid another Catholic king to spend years and a fortune on wars in Europe to prevent it. When her predecessor William III (Carl Prekopp) dies earlier than expected, Anne (Emma Cunniffe) has been unable to provide herself with a living heir, and the seventeen pregnancies she's had while trying have left her physically and mentally exhausted. But she still embraces her new responsibilities, determined to be remembered as England's fairest ruler*.

Theatre review: The Heresy of Love

In addition to its classics and new commissions, Shakespeare's Globe now revives a more recent play with Helen Edmundson's verse drama The Heresy of Love, which makes for a good fit with the theatre's current "Justice & Mercy" season: Its story of a strict regime reinforcing lapsed rules and clashing with a nun resonates with Measure for Measure, while the Catholic Church using the threat of damnation to pull rank on secular powers has echoes in King John. The cast, meanwhile, is largely that of the current As You Like It, although they've gone to one of the Globe's past Rosalinds for the lead: Edmundson's play is inspired by the true story of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Naomi Frederick,) a 17th Century Mexican nun, also a much-loved poet and playwright, who became a close friend of the Spanish Viceroy's wife (Ellie Piercy,) and was commissioned to write plays for court occasions.