Theatre review: The Fellowship

Roy Williams, whose Death of England trilogy inadvertently ended up bookending the Covid lockdowns, now turns his hand to a traditional intergenerational family drama at he continues to explore the tensions and contradictions of the children of the Windrush generation. The Fellowship, set in 2019, makes explicit reference to that generation, in the unseen 91-year-old mother of Dawn (Cherrelle Skeete.) She moved into her younger daughter's house when her health started to fail terminally - it's implied if never explicitly stated that her deterioration really began with the Home Office scandal that she got caught up in. Dawn's feelings about a mother who was physically and emotionally abusive are complicated at best, but she's still taken on most of her care compared to older sister Marcia (Suzette Llewellyn,) a barrister and one of a tiny minority of black QCs, whose career has always taken precedence.

Theatre review: Doctor Faustus

Will you have infinite knowledge in return for a bit of the old eternal damnation? Ah you will.

With two plays each over the winter, the Swanamaker is giving William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe equal billing this year, and the last of Michelle Terry’s “Ambitious Fiends” is the most ambitious of all (although Macbeth might be the more fiendish) as Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus seeks to gain knowledge – and by extension power – over the whole of creation. Faustus (Jocelyn Jee Esien) is a voracious scholar who, as far as she’s concerned, has exhausted all human knowledge and wants more. The only books left are the forbidden volumes of necromancy, which she uses to summon a demon. Mephistopheles’ (Pauline McLynn) contract specifies that she’ll serve Faustus for 24 years on Earth, in return for her immortal soul. Believing herself to have outsmarted the demon, Faustus takes the deal and begins a journey to learn the mysteries of the universe.

Theatre review: Fences

Continuing one of the more successful reinventions from standup comedian to stage actor, Lenny Henry stars in Fences, part of August Wilson's "Pittsburgh Cycle" of ten plays about being a black American in the 20th century, each covering a different decade. This is the 1950s' installment, where Henry plays Troy Maxson, a rubbish man who at the start of the play is lobbying his union to help make him the first black man in the city to drive the truck instead of picking up the rubbish behind it. He'll get the wished-for promotion (despite his lack of a driving licence,) but like many things in his life it won't turn out to be quite what he expects. Now in his fifties, he's haunted by the professional baseball career he never quite had, and sees his life as a series of duties he has to carry out for his family.