Theatre review: Once On This Island

Regent's Park opens its 2023 Open Air Theatre season with Once On This Island, Lynn Ahrens (book and lyrics) and Stephen Flaherty's (music) loose musical adaptation of The Little Mermaid, reinterpreted as a fable about colourism in Haiti. Ti Moune (Gabrielle Brooks) is introduced as a legend of the island, a dark-skinned foundling girl adopted by Mama Euralie (Natasha Magigi) and Tonton Julian (Chris Jarman.) They are peasants, a class dictated by their darker skin - the wealth and power of the island rests with the lighter-skinned Grands Hommes, descended from Napoleonic settlers and their black mistresses. They congregate at a luxury hotel, banning the peasants from profiting off the tourists, but one day the heir to the hotel fortune has a car accident on the wrong side of the tracks. Ti Moune finds Daniel (Stephenson Ardern-Sodje) close to death.

Theatre review: Lady Windermere's Fan

Dominic Dromgoole passes the directing reins over to Kathy Burke for the second major production in his Oscar Wilde season at the Vaudeville: Lady Windermere’s Fan slightly predates A Woman of No Importance but, for my money, feels the more rounded and accomplished play; and while it also has a strong cast, it doesn’t depend on them as strongly to do a salvage job as the first in the season depended on Eve Best. Lady Margaret Windermere (Grace Molony) has been married for two years, and has failed to pick up on the hints everyone’s dropping that her marriage is the subject of much gossip. It’s only when the Duchess of Berwick (Jennifer Saunders) outright tells her that she learns her husband Arthur (Joshua James) has in recent months started to pay regular visits to a mysterious woman; a look through his bank book reveals he’s also been paying her large sums of money.