Theatre review: Bodies

With Future Dame Billie Piper about to reprise her Yerma at the Young Vic, over at the Royal Court we have another childless woman taking a much more pragmatically 21st century approach to the problem. She’s not yet got the profile of someone like James Graham, Lucy Kirkwood or Polly Stenham but ever since her debut with Mogadishu* Vivienne Franzmann has been delivering such consistently good work she’s as much of a must-see playwright for me as any of them. In Bodies the woman desperate for a child is Clem (Justine Mitchell,) who after five miscarriages has opted for surrogacy. Her husband Josh (Jonathan McGuinness, reading in the role after Brian Ferguson got ill,) will provide the sperm, the eggs come from an unknown woman in Russia, while actually carrying the baby will be Lakshmi (Salma Hoque) in India, where surrogates have very few rights.

Theatre review: Multitudes

Much as it suits the narratives of particular papers and politicians to pretend otherwise, British Muslims aren't a homogenous group with a single mindset but are, as the title of John Hollingworth's play has it, Multitudes, all with their own experiences and priorities. Hollingworth attempts - with variable success - to put as many of these points of view, as well as some that oppose them, into a single Bradford family. The famously multicultural city becomes the unlikely venue for the Conservative Party Conference, at the same time as military action in Syria is being mooted. A moderate Muslim and longstanding local councillor with Parliamentary ambitions, Kash (Navin Chowdhry) is due to make an optimistic speech at the conference. He's a widower with a teenage daughter, and a white girlfriend, Natalie (Clare Calbraith,) who's got a surprise in store for him.