Radio review: The Likes of Us

After another week of staring at screens all day a radio play sometimes feels like the order of the day, this time a dip into the recent archive of Radio 3's drama strand, courtesy of the great Roy Williams: The Likes of Us premiered in February last year but has remained available on BBC Sounds. As mentioned by the playwright himself in his introduction, it was inspired by the Grenfell Tower fire, an event that provides both a framing device and a couple of crucial plot points in the life story of a woman loosely based on Williams' own mother. We first meet Gloria (Doreene Blackstock) through the prism of her daughter Sharon (Clare Perkins,) a teacher who's been tasked with writing her mother's eulogy. Having always had a combative relationship with her mother she finds this difficult, but takes some inspiration when she discovers Gloria kept secret diaries. These describe, as she would have expected, her arrival from Jamaica as part of the Windrush Generation, the racism she experienced, and the deterioration of her relationship with her husband (Steve Toussaint,) in part as a result of those experiences, in part because of his many affairs.

Theatre review: Father Comes Home From The Wars Parts 1, 2 & 3

Perhaps inspired by August Wilson's Century Cycle of plays exploring the African-American experience, playwright Suzan-Lori Parks has created her own epic sequence, Father Comes Home From The Wars, that looks at the legacy of slavery in America. It's a series of nine plays following a single family down the centuries, and the Royal Court here presents Jo Bonney's original Off-Broadway production of the first three in the sequence, with a largely British cast. These three sections of the story take place during the American Civil War, and the central figure is the dubiously-named Hero (Steve Toussaint,) whose master has promised him his freedom if he serves with him in the Confederate Army. Part 1 opens as the other slaves wait for day to break, taking bets on whether Hero will decide to stay or go.

Theatre review: A Doll's House

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: This opens to professional critics next week.

I'm not the biggest Ibsen fan (too often it's three hours of boringly-staged misery) but have seen enough good productions of his work to persevere with it. Having booked for the Young Vic's production of A Doll's House I was further worried by the casting of Hattie Morahan as Nora - she's an actress a lot of people are crazy about but whose performances I've often found insufferably smug. The good news is, Carrie Cracknell's production overturns all my worries about writer and cast. Over the course of Christmas 1878, a Norwegian wife and mother's life falls apart: The secret debts she got into years ago to help her husband Torvald are coming back to haunt her, along with the revelation that Nora committed fraud to secure the loan. But for all the worries that cripple her over the holiday, what she doesn't realise is that the biggest blow will be finding out what Torvald really thinks of her.