Theatre review: The Visit, or,The Old Lady Comes To Call

After Angels in America was a transatlantic success for the National Theatre twice over, it's no surprise if they're keen to bring Tony Kushner back to their stages; the Olivier this time, and instead of an original story it's for an adaptation of Friedrich Dürrenmatt's obscure 1956 play The Visit, or, The Old Lady Comes To Call; but one thing that definitely hasn't changed is Kushner's determination that, once he's got the audience through the doors, he's going to keep them there as long as humanly possible. And while it doesn't fly quite as far into the realms of magic realism as his most famous work, this play - essentially an extended fable on debt of many different kinds - is full of oddities. It takes place over a few days in 1955 in the town of Slurry, New York State, once a manufacturing hub but now collapsing, its various businesses sold up to unseen buyers and liquidated years ago, and now reduced to selling the church bells for scrap metal.

Theatre review: Solaris

Every time someone puts science fiction on stage the reaction seems to be wondering why it's not done more often; perhaps it's the association with big-budget movies that means nobody expects the story to work without the kind of special effects the stage can't recreate. But there's also a very pared-back side to much sci-fi, a coldly clinical world holding off the unknowable just the other side of the monitor, and that's what David Greig's Solaris taps into so well. Stanisław Lem's novel has been filmed twice but I've not seen either film, which feels like a decided advantage as Matthew Lutton's production - an Edinburgh / Melbourne / London co-production now playing the last of those cities on its tour - unfolds its mystery. A three-person team has spent two years on a space station orbiting the impossible planet of Solaris - entirely covered in ocean, and orbiting two suns, one red, one blue. The story begins as the mission comes to an end.