Theatre review: Bird Grove

Alexi Kaye Campbell throws a little dig at himself in Bird Grove, as a male writer telling the story of how women's voices needed to be heard, and how one woman made sure hers was one of them. She did do it under the male pseudonym of George Elliot, but in 1841 she's still Mary Ann Evans (Elizabeth Dulau,) a woman whose family is starting to worry might be getting too old to attract a husband. Her father Robert (Owen Teale) has recently retired after a lifetime of hard work which has, however, left him financially very comfortable: He's bought Bird Grove House in Coventry for him and his daughter to live in; the idea is that they'll settle into a new area as a respectable family who'll attract eligible young men to propose to Mary Ann. This isn't getting off to the best start though, as her brother Isaac (Jolyon Coy) has brought along a very bad match in Horace (Jonnie Broadbent.)

Theatre review: Wild East

The Young Vic's Clare Studio continues to be the home for the Genesis Future Director Award Winners, and 2019's first production sees Lekan Lawal take on April De Angelis' absurdist take on the job interview from Hell format, 2005's Wild East. Frank (Zach Wyatt) is a socially inept anthropology graduate applying for a job at a company that collates and analyses data from people in emerging markets, for use in product marketing. It seems an unlikely match for him but it would involve spending a lot of time in Russia, a country he's always felt a strong connection to, and where a girl he likes lives. So he's keen to impress his interviewers, but even if his lack of social skills didn't trip him up, the fact that Dr Pitt (Lucy Briers) and Dr Gray (Kemi-Bo Jacobs) start imploding in front of him will.

Theatre review: Building the Wall

Robert Schenkkan’s dystopian Building the Wall has, perhaps unsurprisingly, been a hit in the USA, where it was one of the first plays to imagine the consequences of a Trump presidency. Set in a Texas jail cell in November 2019, Trump has been impeached, for reasons that may or may not turn out to be connected to the cell’s inhabitant: Rick (Trevor White) is awaiting sentencing for a crime that’s made him the most hated man in America, and following his lawyer’s advice he didn’t testify at his own trial, so his side of the story remains unheard. From the pile of letters asking for interviews, he’s picked out Gloria’s (Angela Griffin,) and we follow the uninterrupted 80 minutes the historian has been granted to interview him. The actual nature of his crime is the play’s big reveal so it’ll be a while before we can get to that; first we have some background to the characters, particularly Rick himself.

Theatre review: This is Living

Following a well-received Edinburgh run in 2014, Liam Borrett's This is Living gets re-written as a two-act play for its London premiere, and what I consider very exciting TV-to-stage casting: Never mind your Downton escapees who get the papers het up, Michael Socha is a better actor than he gets credit for, awkwardly sexy and a core Being Human cast member to add to the collection to boot. He plays Michael, who at the start of the play is trying to get a difficult message across to his wife Alice (Tamla Kari.) Namely that she's dead, having drowned the previous day while trying to get their 3-year-old daughter out of a river when she fell in. The child is making a good recovery in hospital but the ambulance was too late for Alice, and every time he sleeps between her death and her funeral, Michael dreams that he's reunited with his wife as she waits to pass on to whatever's next.