Theatre review: Maggots

Maggots tells an inherently downbeat, pessimistic story but Farah Najib's writing constantly upends this, leaving you feeling like you've watched a story of hope, however many times its narrators assure you of the contrary. Sam Baker Jones, Safiyya Ingar and Marcia Lecky are those narrators, reminding you at the outset that they're actors and the story isn't true ("but it could be") in an unfussy style that's typical of Najib's story and Jess Barton's production: They tell the story of Linda, who one day during a heatwave googles "what does death smell like?" She's got a nasty suspicion about the sickly-sweet smell that's coming from somewhere in her block of flats, and asks the building's WhatsApp group if they've seen the woman in number 61 recently, but gets no response. The story gently adds more characters as other neighbours start to notice something wrong, beginning with the young mother on the other side of the flat.

Theatre review: Here

Southwark Playhouse's current home on Newington Causeway has been rechristened Southwark Playhouse Borough, to differentiate it from the new venue down the road that it's going to be coexisting with for the next couple of years. It's also once again become the host of the annual Papatango playwrighting prize after it moved to the Bush last year - although it's now in the Large space after several years in the Little. I've often thought Papatango tends to favour fairly downbeat plays, though they generally come with some spark of inspiration that makes them worth catching. Well 2022's winner, Clive Judd's kitchen sink play Here, definitely provides the downbeat part, but unfortunately I personally failed to find in it the redeeming features to make its hefty running time worthwhile. The kitchen is in the West Midlands home of Monica (Lucy Benjamin,) which she inherited when her father died two years earlier, and which still has the 1980s decor he left behind.