Theatre review: Our Lady of Kibeho

Definitely fitting the bill of a long-awaited show, ten years after The Mountaintop first became a surprise smash (and notwithstanding her doing book duties on a musical,) we finally get a follow-up play from Katori Hall in London. Our Lady of Kibeho is a much more epic affair than its predecessor but it shares its theme of looking at an incredibly dark moment in black history from a fantastical, mystical perspective, and bringing an element of hope and humour to it. Inspired by true events, Kibeho is a remote village in the mountains of Rwanda, home to breathtaking scenery, a Catholic girls' school and not much else. But in 1981 it looks like it could be put on the map in a big way when Alphonsine (Taz Munya,) an unremarkable student who, as a Tutsi, is in the minority at the school, claims to have had a vision of the Virgin Mary.

Theatre review: The Vertical Hour

Like Skylight, David Hare's The Vertical Hour sees him pit political ideologies against each other in the middle of a complicated personal relationship, in a conversation that runs on well into the night. In this 2006 play though, the political subject - the Iraq War - is made clear from the outset. Nadia (Thusitha Jayasundera) used to be a war correspondent, but after her time in Sarajevo moved back to America, settling at Yale as a politics lecturer. The play is bookended by seminars with two of her students (Cameron Cuffe, Pepter Lunkuse,) who like many have a degree of undisguised contempt for her support of the "liberation" of Iraq. Her views are so high-profile she's been invited to advise George W. Bush in person, and she can't escape discussion of the subject even when she goes on holiday with her English boyfriend Philip (Finlay Robertson) to meet his (now-divorced) parents.