Theatre review: Teeth'N'Smiles

The ultimate accolade shouldn't be a gold record, it should be a golden hypodermic. Parklife!

David Hare's play with songs Teeth Apostrophe N Apostrophe Smiles, which premiered at the Royal Court in 1975, is set six years earlier in 1969, when disillusionment with rock music and the counterculture it spearheaded was starting to set in. Maggie Frisby and The Skins are a once-popular group on its last legs, doing tours around UK universities that barely cover their expenses - Rebecca Lucy Taylor Also Known As Self Esteem plays vocalist Maggie, with Michael Abubakar, Bill Caple, Samuel Jordan, Jojo Macari and Noah Weatherby as a band at various levels of frustration at the way their careers have turned out. Maggie is a former heroin addict, but while we're given no reason to doubt that she's given that up, she's still unapologetically and indisputably an alcoholic who may or may not perform on any given night - it's the shows she's really looking forward to that the band know to be most worried about.

Theatre review: The Fear of 13

The Donald and Margot Warehouse celebrates the start of its Timothy Sheader era by hiking the price of my preferred seats by almost 150%, so I was in a slightly worse seat than usual for a mere 50% or so rise for the opening show, Lindsey Ferrentino's The Fear of 13. Though at times an onslaught of implausible events it's firmly in the "truth is stranger than fiction" camp as, with the exception of the character of Jackie who we're told is partly fictionalised to protect her identity, it's based on a documentary film covering true events: Jackie (Nana Mensah) is a graduate student interviewing inmates of a Pennsylvania high security prison on behalf of an advocacy group, and is eventually drawn to the story of quietly charming Death Row inmate Nick Yarris (Adrien Brody,) convicted in 1982 of a particularly grisly murder. Nick has become a prolific reader in prison, and has educated himself to become a compelling storyteller.

Theatre review: Kerry Jackson

The Dorfman's final piece of new writing of 2022 takes a despairing look at the polarisation of opinion by politics and class in modern Britain, and the impossibility of reconciling the warring points of view, but chucks it into a blender with a pretty frantic comedy. What comes out isn't exactly gazpacho, despite April De Angelis setting Kerry Jackson in a tapas restaurant: Opening a new restaurant is a risky business at the best of times, but Kerry (Fay Ripley) has taken a punt on launching her business in the middle of a cost of living crisis. Walthamstow Village is up-and-coming so her opening weeks don't go too badly, but she's concerned that homeless Will (Michael Fox,) who sleeps rough across the road, is putting off her customers. When she aggressively confronts him she makes matters worse, and soon he's leaving dirty protests by her wheelie bins.

Theatre review: Clybourne Park

I'm yet to see Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun, famous as a classic work on race in America, not to mention one of the first big successes by a black female playwright, but I am now seeing a second London production of a more recent hit directly inspired by, and set in the same neighbourhood as, Hansberry's play. I think if Bruce Norris' Clybourne Park had been written now there would be more questions asked about whether this was a male white playwright's story to tell (and there's always been a certain amount of controversy around the subject,) but when it premiered in 2010 it was a big success, even becoming that rarity: A Pulitzer winner I don't hate. And Oliver Kaderbhai's revival demonstrates why, as the bold choice to tackle America's most contentious subject with broad comedy is backed up by Norris' pitch-perfect comic escalation.

Theatre review: A Lie of the Mind

I'm still a long way from being a fan of Sam Shepard's work but I've been getting on a lot better with the plays that have been revived this year. They're still quintessentially American, and a focus on what it means to be an American man is at the heart of them, but like in Buried Child there's a wider scope of interest and an unsettling edge of the surreal to A Lie of the Mind. Initially appearing to be about domestic violence, it becomes a spiral of insanity as the violent, unpredictable drunk Jake (Gethin Anthony) arrives at his brother's house claiming that he's beaten his wife to death. In fact Beth (Alexandra Dowling) is still alive, but the attack has left her with brain damage. Jake, too, seems to be out of his mind, the extremity of his violence leading to a nervous breakdown. Both of them get taken back to their parents' homes to recover, but neither house is really a good place for anyone's mental health.