Theatre review: Fatherland

Frantic Assembly’s verbatim piece Fatherland is the brainchild of director Scott Graham, composer Karl Hyde and playwright Simon Stephens, who come from Corby, Kidderminster and Stockport respectively. Their idea was to return to those home towns and conduct a dozen interviews with local men about fatherhood – most of them fathers themselves, all of them at least having something to say about their own fathers. The resulting play puts their thoughts and memories on stage in a text put together by Stephens, sometimes set to music by Hyde, and brought to typically physical life by Graham, but the actual interview process and creation of the play ends up being as much if not more of what it’s about: As well as casting actors to play their subjects, the trio put versions of themselves on stage too, with Nyasha Hatendi’s Simon and Declan Bennett’s Scott leading the interviews while Mark Arends’ Karl absent-mindedly records everything in the background.

Theatre review: The Epic Adventure of Nhamo the Manyika Warrior and His Sexy Wife Chipo

This year's recurring meme of hefty play titles makes its next appearance at the Tricycle, where Lucian Msamati directs a new play by Denton Chikura, The Epic Adventure of Nhamo the Manyika Warrior and His Sexy Wife Chipo. The setting is Zimbabwe, where a fable for the ages is waiting to be told and the narrator, bad guy and romantic interest are present and correct. Unfortunately the story is stalled because it lacks a protagonist and, egged on by mysterious and somewhat threatening voices, the Narrator (Don Gilet) is desperate to find one. When the goatherd Nhamo (Ery Nzaramba) wanders out of the bush looking for an escaped goat, he's pressed into service but is found severely lacking, and the tale by necessity becomes an origin story, to turn him from zero to hero - all in the silliest way possible.