Theatre review: Dream of Perfect Sleep

Continuing what's been something of a bleak-themed 2014 at the Finborough is a look at dementia and mortality in Kevin Kautzman's Dream of Perfect Sleep. At one time a scholar who traveled the world, Mary (Susan Tracy) is now gradually losing her mind to dementia. Her husband Gene (Martin Wimbush,) having recovered from an unspecified illness a few years back, has now had an incurable relapse. It's not Christmas, but Gene has told Mary it is, and decorated the house accordingly becuase he's invited their children to visit: Insomniac, ex-pill addict Robert (Cory English) and their adopted daughter, the hippie-ish Melissa (Lisa Caruccio Came) are coming to this pretend Christmas Eve because Gene wants to tell them about their parents' failing health, but also how they plan to deal with it: In her more lucid moments Mary has asked that she is not left alone to lose who she is.

Theatre review: Nothing is the End of the World (Except for the End of the World)

American Playwright Bekah Brunstetter's new sci-fi comedy Nothing is the End of the World (Except for the End of the World) was originally written for a performing arts high school, and features in its lineup all the archetypes of a US teen movie: There's the popular but highly-strung class princess, Jessica (Skye Lourie,) her sexually confused jock boyfriend Kit (Christopher Webster,) the angry rock chick Emma (Amanda Hootman,) Esther, whose parents are religious fundamentalists obsessed with the End of Days (Sheena May,) flamboyant drama geek Danny (Robin Crouch) and outcast Lucy (Natalie Kent.) But in their midst is dropped an even bigger pair of outsiders: Godfrey (Dan Crow) and Olive (Lisa Caruccio Came) are artificially intelligent androids built from the bodies of dead humans. Their attempts to assimilate with the human teenagers will be filmed for reality TV.

Theatre review: A Thousand Miles of History

Last year the Royal Court did one of its Theatre Local seasons in the Bussey Building in Peckham, and the venue is now attempting to continue as a performance space. Although the third floor of a freezing building in a gloomy back alley off Rye Lane is perhaps a hard sell as a theatre, as evidenced by tonight's turnout: A Thousand Miles of History may be flawed, but it deserves an audience bigger than the seven people¹ it got tonight. Harold Finley's play looks at the rise and fall of two of the biggest New York artists of the 1980s, Jean-Michel Basquiat (Michael Walters) and Keith Haring (Simon Ginty.) In a white warehouse space, hung with blank canvases in Mike Lees' design, Basquiat and Haring are friends who take the art scene by storm, blocking from their minds the knowledge that being the height of fashion means an inevitable fall from favour is coming.