Theatre review: King James

After being very disappointing in 2023, Hampstead Theatre has been getting back into my good books this year, and a strong autumn season continues with King James. Hot on the heels of the Guards at the Taj revival, Rajiv Joseph gives us another two-hander about a platonic male friendship, although while this one also reaches a crisis it's a mercifully bloodless one. We also get to see the relationship right from its inception, as it begins in the Cleveland wine bar where Matt (Sam Mitchell) works. His wages there certainly don't cover the amount of debt he's in, because he's having to sell the remaining games on his season ticket for the local basketball team, the Cavaliers, seats he and his father have sat in all his life. What makes it particularly heartbreaking is that this is the 2003-4 season, in which after decades without any silverware the team has signed teenager LeBron James, a player who went on to become so famous even a British audience is likely to have heard of him, even if we couldn't tell you his full history with the "Cavs."

Theatre review: Guards at the Taj

As well as being one of the most famous man-made landmarks on Earth, Taj Mahal in Agra, India is known as something of a romantic symbol of love, built as it was by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan as a tribute to his favourite wife after her death. But there's also an enduring legend that he decreed no other structure should ever match its beauty, and to ensure this had the hands cut off the 20,000 workers who built the monument so they could never work on anything else. Rajiv Joseph's 2015 play Guards at the Taj deals with this contrast of profound beauty and extreme cruelty that the Taj represents, and Adam Karim revives it at the Orange Tree as this year's JMK Award winning director. During the 16 years of construction, the monument was hidden from public view behind a wall, and the play opens a few hours before dawn comes and the Taj is finally revealed.

Theatre review: Describe the Night

Rajiv Joseph’s Guards at the Taj took its inspiration from a false, but widely believed, legend about the building of the Taj Mahal; for Describe the Night he mixes real historical figures and events with fiction of his own invention, in a play that looks at Fake News in a context that made an art form of it: Soviet Russia. His story ranges over 90 years and could be described as the journey taken by a diary, written by journalist and novelist Isaac Babel (Ben Caplan) in 1920. Following the Russian army to Poland, he was employed to write the official dispatches, but also kept this personal journal to record his reactions and descriptions of places and events. In 2010, a plane crash near Smolensk killed the Polish president and much of his cabinet on the way to a memorial service, inspiring conspiracy theories about the Russian government’s involvement. When Feliks (Joel MacCormack) finds the wreckage, a dying woman gives him the diary.

Theatre review: Guards at the Taj

The Bush has just reopened after a major rebuild of its new building, that comes with reserved seating and new separate entrances for the box office, auditorium and toilets, which should hopefully all add up to a less nightmarish time in the bar area. It looks nice enough, although let's hope Madani Younis doesn't have any ideas about it being the most beautiful theatre there ever was or ever will be - if Guards at the Taj is anything to go by I'd hate to think what he might do to the builders. Rajiv Joseph's play takes its theme from a popular myth about the building of the Taj Mahal: Over the 16 years of its construction it was hidden behind temporary walls, and only its architect and the men building it were allowed to see it before it was finished, on pain of death to anyone who snuck a look. Joseph sets his play on the night before the unveiling, with Taj Mahal out of bounds for a few more hours.

Theatre review: Gruesome Playground Injuries

There's nothing metaphorical about the title of Rajiv Joseph's Gruesome Playground Injuries, receiving its UK premiere at the Gate in a new collaboration with the National Theatre Studio. When Kayleeri and Doug meet for the first time aged 8 at a Catholic school, they're both in the nurse's office, she for a stomach-ache, he for having "broken his face." Joseph's play follows their relationship over the next 30 years, jumping around in time - the action always jumps 15 years forward, then 10 years back, from the preceding scene - and always in a clinic or hospital where one or the other needs care of some kind. It's usually the reckless, clumsy Doug, who's come to believe that Kayleeri's touch can heal his wounds, or at least soothe the pain. Although their friendship survives in some form or other from the ages of 8 to 38, they're not always that good at being there for each other.