Theatre review: The Lonely Londoners

Roy Williams' The Lonely Londoners is the first stage adaptation of Sam Selvon's classic novel of the Windrush generation, and he makes a concise, intense evening out of its sweeping journey through the lives of six people who've arrived in London from Trinidad in the 1950s. At the centre of the group is Moses (Gamba Cole,) one of a trio of early arrivals who've developed a healthy cynicism after years of struggling to find and keep work, and experiencing casual and not-so-casual racism in a mother country they'd been told was desperately in need of their help. To his irritation, Moses has found himself in the position of fixer for the community, someone newcomers have heard about and go to for help. He tries to prepare wide-eyed newcomers for the reality of life as a black Londoner, and they don't come much more wide-eyed and optimistic than Galahad (Romario Simpson.)

Theatre review: The Gift

Bruce Norris' Clybourne Park is about to get a London revival but before then the Theatre Royal Stratford East jumps in with a new play that feels very much like a British response to that play: Both deal with racism in their respective countries by contrasting a story from the past with one in the present, and tackle a very real and serious matter through the surprisingly successful medium of a sharp comedy of embarrassment. And if there were any doubt that Janice Okoh's The Gift was a British play, the action centres on three excruciating tea parties. In the first two acts two black British women, both called Sarah, living over a century apart, are preparing for trips to Nigeria they don't really want to go on: Based on a real historical figure, Sarah Bonetta Davies (Shannon Hayes) was a Yoruba princess captured by enemies as a child, only to be rescued and given as a gift to Queen Victoria, who considered herself her adopted mother (although she largely packed her off to be raised by someone else.)