Theatre review: I Wish To Die Singing

Finborough boss Neil McPherson takes a break from reading new and forgotten plays to put one of his own together, a verbatim play about events in 1915 and later. I Wish To Die Singing - Voices from the Armenian Genocide mixes the history of Turkey during the First World War (the show is part of the occasional THEGREATWAR100 series) with the accounts of those who survived a massacre that inspired the very term "genocide" to be invented and officially defined. With Turkey having sided with Germany in the war and suffering a major defeat, a scapegoat was sought. The Christian Armenians, long the business leaders in the Ottoman Empire and resented for it, made for an easy and popular target, and brutal "cleansing" was ordered. The fact that this genocide was largely forgotten or denied within a couple of decades is quoted as a reason Hitler felt encouraged to follow a similar course of action with the Jews.

Theatre review: Velocity

If you enjoy feeling baffled, London's theatres are really catering to your interests at the moment. Daniel Macdonald's Velocity takes the alternate slot at the Finborough with a gleefully surreal story of a teenage girl who longs for a bit more of what she imagines a "normal" family life to be, and tries to use science to make it happen. Dot (Rosie Day) is 15, and for her Physics project she'll be experimenting with Newtonian theories by blowing her father up and out of his 73rd floor office. The six seconds it takes him to fall to the ground are slowed down to last the whole of her presentation, so before Michael (Nicholas Cass-Beggs) goes splat we get to meet him and his TV presenter wife Laura (Helene Wilson) and see what Dot sees, as they prioritise their work over her and over each other.