Theatre review: Nine Night

Actor Natasha Gordon’s accomplished first play Nine Night takes its name from a Jamaican funeral custom: The wake takes place over nine nights, with a series of boisterous parties in honour of the deceased; on the final night their spirit is encouraged to move on. In another case of a play arriving at a time that makes it accidentally topical, we’re in the house of a woman from the Windrush generation, Gloria, who’s just died of cancer. Nine Night is an ensemble piece but at the heart of it is Gloria’s younger daughter Lorraine (Franc Ashman,) who took voluntary redundancy to care for her mother during her final months, and has now been left in charge of the funeral arrangements, and of keeping up with the food and drink demands of a regular stream of guests. We only hear the parties in the background; the action takes place in the kitchen, still done up in 1970s style (set design by Rajha Shakiry.)

Theatre review: Luce

What starts as a look at modern-day paranoia around terrorism turns into a sometimes sinister drama about communication and how well we know our own families in JC Lee's Luce. Liberal American couple Amy (Mel Giedroyc) and Peter (Nigel Whitmey) adopted an orphaned seven-year-old boy from an unnamed, war-torn African country. Many of the kids adopted in the scheme were traumatised and had major behavioural problems, but Amy and Peter were lucky - Luce (Martins Imhangbe,) now 17, has been a model son and his school's star pupil. But when one of his teachers, Harriet (Natasha Gordon,) sets her class an essay that asks them to "think outside the box" and imagine themselves as a historical figure at a significant moment, she's disturbed when Luce chooses an obscure 1970s terrorist. She searches his locker and finds dangerous, illegal fireworks, but as Luce has an otherwise unblemished record she doesn't inform the police, instead inviting Amy to discuss what she's discovered.

Theatre review: Untitled Matriarch Play (or Seven Sisters)

I know people who were hoping to skip the Royal Court's Weekly Rep season (when you're a theatre geek there's enough shows to keep up with without one venue launching a new one each week) but had to relent and book a couple of shows when they saw the quality of the ensemble. And this cast (who it's hard to believe were in their first public performance after only a week's rehearsal) are once again saving an evening that could have gone very differently in the penultimate show of the season, Untitled Matriarch Play (or Seven Sisters.) And a lot of the time Nikole Beckwith's work is as bizarre as you'd expect from a play that has an alternate title despite not having a first title. Also, there's seven women in the cast and most of their characters are related, but only four of them are sisters.

Theatre review: Death Tax

The main event in the Royal Court's Open Court season is a six-week repertory, in which a company of actors takes on a different play every week, with just one week's rehearsal and one of performances. I missed the opening offering from the new Artistic Director Vicky Featherstone (word on Twitter suggests I didn't miss much) but the second play in the series is directed by her most trusted lieutenant from the National Theatre of Scotland, John Tiffany. Lucas Hnath's Death Tax revolves around money, and how it seems to corrupt your life whether you've got too much of it or not enough. Set in a Florida nursing home, much of it centres on Tina (Natasha Gordon,) a nurse who finds herself tempted when a wealthy, elderly resident accuses her of trying to speed up her death - and offers her a much-needed incentive not to.

Theatre review: The Low Road

Bruce Norris provided Dominic Cooke with his first show as artistic director of the Royal Court, as well as the play that perhaps best summed up his tenure for me, Clybourne Park. So it's to Norris that Cooke turns again for his farewell production, and an epic, comic and sometimes downright bizarre parable in The Low Road. With the American War of Independence looming, a baby is left on the doorstep of a brothel, with a note promising whoever raises him will be rewarded when he turns 17. There will be money coming Jim Trumpett's way by the end of his teens, but it'll be of his own making, as the budding capitalist "reorganises" the brothel's finances, cheerfully ripping off the prostitutes who helped raise him in the process. Setting off on a ruthless moneymaking odyssey, Jim's first financial transaction is to buy a slave, and his subsequent business dealings don't get any nicer.