Theatre review: Magnificence

Nowadays Howard Brenton is our top writer of history plays but in the 1970s he was a more overtly political writer, and things don't get much more overt than Magnificence, which opens with a group of idealistic young protesters breaking into - what they think is - an abandoned flat. In the first sign of why the Finborough might have seen the play as ripe for revival, they're planning to squat there in protest at people being made homeless all over London while houses are left empty, as tenants get kicked out of flats they've lived in all their lives so they can be redeveloped and rented out at an inflated price. They're enthusiastic and somewhat naïve, but as the days go by the squat is watched by bailiff Slaughter (Chris Porter) - a man profiting from the situation they're campaigning against, and one with a reputation for dangerous practices.

Theatre review: A Third

With the Finborough Theatre turned into an upper-middle class living room for Alpha Beta, they couldn't venture too far from that for their alternate show. Hence A Third, Laura Jacqmin's look at modern marriage and how the reality of polyamorous relationships stacks up against the fantasy. After six years of marriage Paul (Jeremy Legat) and Allison (Asha Reid) are still in love and still attracted to each other, but want to pre-empt the seven-year itch and think threesomes - with very strict rules - are the answer. They find Jay (Will Alexander,) who's been "a third" many times before on Craigslist, and have a successful evening with him; next they go to a lesbian club night, where they convince Mariella (Lucy Roslyn) to join them. Not sure if they want to continue with the open relationship, the couple stop contacting both of them.

Non-review: Utopia

I can't call this a review as, for the first time this year, I couldn't handle the prospect of sitting through the whole of Utopia at Soho Theatre, so Andy and I left at the interval. Directors Steve Marmion and Max Roberts promised an ambitious project that invited a variety of writers, comedians, musicians and politicians to eschew art's tendency to look on the dark side. Instead they were to think positive and contribute their own visions of Utopia. None of this is actually apparent on stage: Instead six performers who deserve better (Tobi Bakare, Laura Elphinstone, Rufus Hound, Pamela Miles, Sophia Myles, David Whitaker) struggle through a substandard student revue, in which a number of sketches are split up and presented in installments over a long, boring, unfunny first hour. I struggled to see what most of them had to do with the subject matter; the rest tackled Utopia from a uniformly bleak perspective of how unattainable it, or anything close to it, is.