Theatre review: Otherland

Chris Bush's Otherland opens with an otherwise happy couple divorcing over one insurmountable issue; the rest of the two and a half hours follows each of them through the huge physical and emotional changes that come next. Jo (Jade Anouka) has always known her husband identified as a woman but had no intention of transitioning, and it never caused any problems. But after ten years together Harry (Fizz Sinclair) has decided it's time to be her real self, and while bisexual Jo is primarily attracted to women, it turns out the woman Harry has become isn't one of them. They separate and largely lose contact, and while Jo meets a new partner in Gabby (Amanda Wilkin,) Harry has to navigate both the legal obstacles to having her gender recognised, and the personal milestones with her family: Her initially supportive-seeming mother Elaine (Retired Lesbian Jackie Clune) is actually constantly deadnaming her and dismissing her transition.

Theatre review: English

Marking both one of the last shows from Indhu Rubasingham at the Kiln, and one of the first from the Harvey/Evans regime at the RSC, this co-production of Sanaz Toossi's English is a great reflection on both companies. A play about language and identity, this was the 2023 Pulitzer winner for drama, and marks another year to buck the trend of underwhelming winners of that prize. Some while ago Marjan (Nadia Albina) spent nine years living in Manchester, before returning to her native Iran. She's married and settled now, but is constantly trying to reconnect with how she felt then, which she does by teaching English classes. Over a five-week course she helps four adults prepare for their TOEFL exam in a classroom she optimistically announces will be a Farsi-free zone (the fact that the play uses the conceit of the actors speaking English in Iranian accents, with "Farsi" represented by English in their own accents, tells you how successful they are at sticking to this.)

Theatre review: Bleak Expectations

We've had films and TV get stage adaptations, now radio gets in on the act; it ended on Radio 4 eleven years ago, but like its characters Mark Evans' Bleak Expectations has risen from the dead in a new and disturbing form. Evans has written a stage version that adapts mainly the first of the five series of frantic Dickensian parody about Pip Bin (Dom Hodson) and his sisters Pippa (Serena Manteghi) and Poppy (Rachel Summers.) Their rich, happy Victorian childhoods go wrong when their father dies in a freak penguin-related accident, and their mother (Ashh Blackwood) does the only respectable thing for a widowed woman of her time, and immediately goes mad. The siblings' nemesis is their new guardian, Gently Benevolent (John Hopkins,) who makes no secret of the fact that he's constantly plotting to murder Pip and marry one of his sisters for the inheritance.

Theatre review: The Bunker: Morgana & Agamemnon

Edinburgh shows are wasting no time in coming down to London this year, and first up we have a double bill from writer Jamie Wilkes, who transposes stories from mythology to the trenches of the First World War in The Bunker. Morgana and Agamemnon are the stories being paired at Southwark Playhouse (at the Festival they played in rep with a third piece riffing on Macbeth.) Director Jethro Compton has set the plays in a claustrophobic design that sees the Little Theatre transformed, and the audience squeezed on benches around the same bunker as the characters. In Morgana a group of 13 public schoolboys who nicknamed themselves after King Arthur and his knights all volunteered for the War together. A couple of years in and only Arthur (Dan Wood,) Lancelot (Sam Donnelly) and Gawain (James Marlowe) remain, still warning each other to watch out for the machinations of Morgana despite the presence of a much more tangible enemy.