Theatre review: Losing Venice

Will the Orange Tree's 2018-19 season have an overarching theme? I only ask because they'll shortly be staging some Martin Crimp, and following Losing Venice that could end up signaling a theme of complete impenetrability. Jo Clifford's 1985 play has been revived by Paul Miller with the strong implication that it's gained a new Brexit-related significance, dealing as it does with a fading Empire that's not quite grasped the fact that it no longer holds the sway it once did, and so engages in an arrogant international display of regaining control that's doomed to failure. In practice this proves a bit of a stretch of what the play's actually about, its blustering imperialism more about the macho posturing of a couple of impotent men than anything wider.

Theatre review: Genesis Inc.

Marking the 40th anniversary of the first test tube baby, Hampstead Theatre stages Genesis Inc., Jemma Kennedy’s satire of the monetisation of reproduction. The tangled plot follows two couples whose experience of the titular IVF clinic throws them together in unexpected ways: Bridget (Laura Howard) is an ambitious financier who’s had her eggs frozen there in case she wants a baby in the future, and overhears that Harry Enfield’s intermittently South African Dr Marshall wants to float the company on the stock market; she decides to pitch to represent him. Meanwhile her best friend Miles (Arthur Darvill) is a gay, Jewish music teacher who’s just got a job in a Catholic boys’ school, and has gone partly back into the closet in the belief that it’ll help him keep his job. Bridget is bearding for him, but with the fertility clinic on her mind, she wonders if the time has come for her to have a baby, and whether instead of an anonymous sperm donor she should ask Miles.