Theatre review: Things I Know to be True

Frantic Assembly use their signature physical style on an unlikely genre, the family melodrama, for Australian playwright Andrew Bovell's Things I Know to be True. The title refers to a mental list kept by Rosie Price (Kirsty Oswald,) a young woman on her gap year in Europe, who gets fucked in more ways than one by a handsome Italian and, heartbroken, makes an early return to suburban Adelaide and her parents Fran (Imogen Stubbs) and Bob (Ewan Stewart.) The baby of the family, Rosie's list is of comforting things about her family and how she'll always know where she stands with them, so of course she's barely back before it all starts to change. Eldest brother Mark (Matthew Barker) has been dumped by his long-term girlfriend due to a crisis he's not yet shared with the others, while Ben's (Richard Mylan) big-spending lifestyle is clearly leading to trouble.

Theatre review: Othello (Frantic Assembly / Lyric Hammersmith)

Othello is the second Shakespeare play this year that I've already got three productions of lined up. Like The Merchant of Venice the first I'm seeing is a return visit to a production I saw some years ago; and like The Merchant it makes for quite a challenge for the future versions to rise to. Frantic Assembly revive their heavily edited, dance-infused version of the play which moves the action from a military encampment in Cyprus, to a violent gang based in a Yorkshire pub called The Cypress. The landlord's daughter, Desdemona (Kirsty Oswald) has secretly married the leader of the gang, Othello (Mark Ebulue.) The secret causes a fuss when it comes out, but it's soon forgotten in the aftermath of a conclusive victory over a rival gang, in which Othello's popular new lieutenant, Michael Cassio (Ryan Fletcher) plays a major role.

Theatre review: We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884 - 1915

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: The Bush invites professional critics in tomorrow. Photos below are from the show's rehearsals.

I usually make it a rule not to read any other reviews before writing my own, but every rule has exceptions and Jackie Sibblies Drury’s We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884 - 1915 is one; I felt the play's reception when it premiered in America would provide some context I needed to interpret certain things about it. As the unwieldy title suggests, Sibblies Drury's play presents something that deliberately looks incredibly rough-and-ready, a showcase by six actors based on a genocide in Africa just before the First World War. The years 1884 - 1915 are the ones when Namibia was a German colony, and over time the Germans favoured various local tribes to do their dirty work for them. One such tribe were the Herero, whose resistance resulted in the order to wipe them out.

Theatre review: The Judas Kiss

"Why on earth did you do it?" One of the programme notes, written by his grandson Merlin Holland, asks one of the biggest questions about the trials of Oscar Wilde: He instigated the whole thing with a libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry's accusation of being a "somdomite" (sic) knowing all along it was not only true but easily proved. This is one of the two main questions tackled by David Hare in his play The Judas Kiss, which is revived by Neil Armfield at Hampstead Theatre prior to a tour. The second central mystery concerns the other man at the centre of the trials, the Marquess' son Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas: Why did Wilde not only keep coming back to, but willingly allow his life to be ruined because of a young man who (in Hare's interpretation at least) seems to have had no redeeming features whatsoever?