Theatre review: Clarion

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: The professional critics haven't been invited to review this yet.

Although maybe it would be best if the newspaper reviewers' invitations got mysteriously lost in the post, as some of them might find Clarion a bit close to home. The Daily Clarion is a right-wing newspaper which has led with scare-stories about immigrants for a solid year, and is generally considered to be somewhere between a national joke and a genuine incitement to hatred. (I couldn't possibly say if there's a real paper it might bear some resemblance to, but writer Mark Jagasia used to work at the Express.) Its only link to journalistic respectability is Verity (Clare Higgins,) a celebrated war correspondent who after a downturn in fortunes has been reduced to the Clarion's regular opinion columnist. The actual editorial policy is determined by a much-feared, unseen proprietor who made his fortune in topless burger bars, but the day-to-day agenda is set by the explosive, demented editor Morris (Greg Hicks.)

Theatre review: Shrapnel - 34 Fragments of a Massacre

Anders Lustgarten can be something of a blunt instrument as a writer, a political playwright whose work is fuelled by anger - sometimes to its advantage, other times to its detriment. There's a slightly different approach in his latest play, though: The anger is still there in Shrapnel - 34 Fragments of a Massacre, but instead of something fiery he lets it seethe, as he observes from a distance the different situations and interests that conspired to cause the 2011 Roboski Massacre in Turkey. A group of Kurdish men, mostly teenagers, regularly smuggled diesel near the Syrian border. Despite knowing that such smuggling missions were common, the Turkish army seemingly mistook them for a terrorist cell on the move, and authorised a US missile drone to open fire and effectively vaporise them.