Stage-to-screen review: It Is Easy To Be Dead

If UK theatres had anything to celebrate at the moment, the Finborough Theatre would be celebrating its 40th birthday today. Still, it's a milestone worth marking for the ambitious fringe venue, hence my second virtual trip this week to Earl's Court. The Finborough had a unique take on marking the centenary of the First World War, and instead of doing a full season of work in 2014, its THEGREATWAR100 strand staged relevant work intermittently over five years, between the points 100 years from the war's beginning, and 100 years from its end. Even so I was probably still worn down by many shows on the subject when It Is Easy To Be Dead came along in 2016, as despite rave reviews, a transfer and an Olivier nomination, I didn't get round to seeing it live. It now forms part of their online fundraising drive, and despite being inevitably heartbreaking the play has more of a bittersweet edge to it.

Theatre review: I Wish To Die Singing

Finborough boss Neil McPherson takes a break from reading new and forgotten plays to put one of his own together, a verbatim play about events in 1915 and later. I Wish To Die Singing - Voices from the Armenian Genocide mixes the history of Turkey during the First World War (the show is part of the occasional THEGREATWAR100 series) with the accounts of those who survived a massacre that inspired the very term "genocide" to be invented and officially defined. With Turkey having sided with Germany in the war and suffering a major defeat, a scapegoat was sought. The Christian Armenians, long the business leaders in the Ottoman Empire and resented for it, made for an easy and popular target, and brutal "cleansing" was ordered. The fact that this genocide was largely forgotten or denied within a couple of decades is quoted as a reason Hitler felt encouraged to follow a similar course of action with the Jews.