Theatre review: Rita, Sue and Bob Too

The Royal Court run of Rita, Sue and Bob Too has turned out to be Schrödinger’s Play – for a while it was simultaneously happening and not happening. Vicky Featherstone cancelled the London performances when the subject matter seemed a bit too close both to the revelations of sexual harassment in the theatre industry in general, and by the production’s original co-director Max Stafford-Clark in particular. She was persuaded to change her mind on the basis that the play could help illuminate the issue, as well as the irony that it was a female playwright – Andrea Dunbar wrote the play when she was 19 – who wouldn’t be heard. So Out of Joint’s touring production, now directed solely by Kate Wasserberg, gets to bring 1982 Bradford to 2018 London for three weeks and show 15-year-olds Rita (Taj Atwal) and Sue (Gemma Dobson) spend their Friday night babysitting for a local couple.

Theatre review: East is East

Ayub Khan-Din's East is East is a play about British Asians that became a big crossover hit in 1997, getting made into a hit film as well. Its first major West End revival comes from Trafalgar-Still-Transformed-But-Just-How-Transformed-It-Is-Is-Becoming-Less-And-Less-Readily-Apparent, with Jamie Lloyd handing over the directing reins to Sam Yates, and Khan-Din now old enough to take on the role of George Khan, based on his own father, himself. Khan is a Pakistani man who left his wife and family behind in the 1930s to move to England, where he promptly married a new, English wife, Ella (Jane Horrocks,) and had a new family with her. They've lived in Salford ever since, and by 1971 when the play starts there's plenty of tension between George and his sons. The eldest is, he says, dead to him, having refused an arranged marriage and left to become a hairdresser. George is now more determined than ever to impose what he sees as proper Pakistani rules on his remaining five sons, and daughter Meenah (Taj Atwal.)