Theatre review: Between Riverside and Crazy

Most actors take a bit of a break after playing King Lear; Danny Sapani barely seems to have taken a breath between his run at the Almeida and another intense, deeply damaged leading man at Hampstead, in Stephen Adly Guirgis' 2014 play Between Riverside and Crazy. Eight years ago Walter "Pops" Washington (Sapani) had to retire from the NYPD after being shot six times by a rookie cop - not actually in the line of duty, although his former employers have more or less treated him as if he was. But Pops has turned down every compensation offer they've ever made, preferring to continue being a thorn in their side and an embarrassment to them, who's still convinced he can get a settlement worth millions. Now Pops' wife has died after a long illness, and he's filled his large rent-controlled apartment with a collection of ex-cons he's trying to help reform.

Theatre review: Clyde's

Lynn Nottage is having a fairly high-profile year in London - we've had The Secret Life of Bees, and hot on the heels of Mlima's Tale at the Kiln, it's back to the Donald and Margot Warehouse where Sweat was staged in 2019. Clyde's takes place in a shared universe with the latter play, as well as sharing a director in Lynette Linton, and while it shows the American playwright to have lost none of her enthusiasm for tackling a heavy subject, it also displays much more of a light touch. The titular establishment is a truck stop diner run by ex-con Clyde (Gbemisola Ikumelo,) who exclusively hires other former inmates who can't find work anywhere else. Although to what extent this is her attempting to help them is a different story, as her managerial style is full supervillain - she likes to keep them terrified of her and remind them that if they don't toe the line and she fires them, nobody else will give them a job.

Theatre review: A Fight Against...(Una Lucha Contra...)

Chilean playwright Pablo Manzi's A Fight Against... (Una Lucha Contra...) was developed at the Royal Court at a time when his country was experiencing a lot of violent unrest against the state and inequality, culminating in recent elections that saw voters lean much more to the Left than had been expected. Some of the play's scenes inevitably reflect this energy, but as the ellipsis in the title suggests, not all of the characters know - or necessarily care - who or what they're fighting. In five separate, but possibly connected scenes spanning the last 140 years, we see characters trying to make sense of their own, or other people's anger: Beginning with Chilean university professor Carla (Jimena Larraguivel,) who returns from a day's teaching to announce that one of her students attacked and threatened to kill her. Her husband (Joseph Balderrama) understandably wants to know more, but something her student said might have alarmed Carla even more than the violence, and she's reluctant to say much.