Theatre review: This Heaven

Once again the Finborough Theatre takes us to Australia, which in Nakkiah Lui's This Heaven is shown up as very much backward where civil rights are concerned, at least for the indigenous people. A few years before the play's start, an Aboriginal man died in police custody. A number of legal battles later and the police are let off with a fine, while his family are left feeling abandoned. His widow Joan (Elizabeth Uter) feels particularly betrayed as she actually worked at the police station for 17 years as their Aboriginal Liaison Officer, a role she's now being quietly shunted out of. But for her children Sissy (Nicôle Lecky) and Ducky (Bevan Celestine) their main reaction is anger. Although they have a sympathetic lawyer in James (Timothy Knightley,) he now advises that they've reached the end of what they can do through the courts.

Theatre review: A Christmas Carol (Old Red Lion)

Charles Dickens' novella A Christmas Carol is not only one of his best-loved stories, it's even credited with forming much of the modern idea of how Christmas should be celebrated. The story of miser Ebenezer Scrooge (Alexander McMorran,) visited on Christmas Eve by a series of ghosts who teach him how to save his soul by embracing the spirit of the season, is one most people will have come across a number of times. So Metal Rabbit's production managing to make it feel fresh and new is quite an achievement. An early indicator that this isn't your usual family fare is in the show's scheduling: Playing at the Old Red Lion after the main show Charming, a 9:30pm start time clearly isn't aimed at getting a big kiddie audience in. Instead this version reveals A Christmas Carol as an all-too-contemporary story by stripping it back to its original political message.