Theatre review: The Sugar-Coated Bullets of the Bourgeoisie

Having studied China and the Chinese language for much of his life, political playwright Anders Lustgarten finally turns to it as the subject for a play in The Sugar-Coated Bullets of the Bourgeoisie - named after a quote from a Chairman Mao speech. It's a history of China in microcosm from 1949 to the present day in the village of Rotten Peach, beginning with Party representatives Xu (Andrew Leung) and Tang (Louise Mai Newberry) arriving to tell the peasants they have to put the local landlord Zhang (Siu Hun Li) on trial. Zhang is confident they'll fear change as much as ever and vote to let him keep everything, but events take a sudden and violent turn, leading to Rotten Peach becoming a model co-operative and enjoying a few years of high productivity before things start to go wrong.

Theatre review: Forget Me Not

With the exception of The Royale, 2015 at the Bush has been an inauspicious year to say the least. There's been shows I instantly forgot and ones I really wished I could have forgotten, and their final show is Forget Me Not, which does feature something to remember. Unfortunately that something is a different, and much better show. 60-something Gerry (Russell Floyd) was born in England but taken to Australia aged 4 as part of a scheme to give orphans a better life. It was a disaster because, like Gerry, many of the children ended up on farms as, essentially, unpaid child labour, and were also abused. Following the death of his wife, Gerry's estranged daughter Sally (Sarah Ridgeway) has grudgingly reconnected with him, and together with her boyfriend Mark (Sargon Yelda) has tried to find any relatives he might still have in Liverpool. What they actually find is apparently a common story in cases of "Forgotten Australians" like his.

Theatre review: peddling

Following successful runs at the HighTide Festival and off-Broadway last year, Harry Melling brings his playwrighting debut to London for a run at the Arcola's basement space. In the monologue peddling, Melling plays a nameless, homeless teenager caught up in a gang of pedlars: A sinister Fagin-like boss puts a bunch of boys onto a bus into London every evening, pretending to be part of a scheme for young offenders, and knocking on doors to try and sell cleaning cloths and toothbrushes, "life's essentials." The boss demands plenty of sales so he can get his cut, but the locals have cottoned on that it's a scam, and our narrator has a pretty fruitless night. His worries about disappointing the boss are forgotten though, when a familiar face appears behind one of the doors - but she doesn't recognise him.

Theatre review: Bottleneck

Songs from the jauntier end of 1980s pop as a teenager chalks graffiti onto the back wall heralds what will actually turn out to be rather a dark show in Luke Barnes' Bottleneck, directed by Steven Atkinson. Greg (James Cooney) is 14, and a huge Liverpool fan. It's 1989 and Greg is going through the usual teenage problems, trying to figure out how to deal with girls, scrape some money together for football tickets, and getting grounded by his dad, an outspoken trade union leader. His slightly fey best friend Tom is an Everton fan but it doesn't get in the way of their shared rebellious streak. When Tom surprises him with football tickets, Greg's 15th birthday goes from the best day of his life to the worst as they find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.