Theatre review: The Wife of Willesden

Given an extra push by the announcement, a couple of years ago, that Brent would be the London Borough of Culture*, the Kiln Theatre continues to commission hyper-local shows that celebrate the diversity and big personalities of the area. Indhu Rubasingham's latest production sees novelist Zadie Smith turn playwright, and adapt "The Wife of Bath's Tale" from Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, into a raucous modern-day version - The Wife of Willesden. The venue's recent major refurbishment has given it a very flexible auditorium, and designer Robert Jones takes the opportunity to more or less strip out the Stalls seats, replacing them with pub tables and benches that reach right up to the edges of the stage. In keeping with the theme of staying close to home, the design is based on the Sir Colin Campbell pub, right across the road from the theatre.

Theatre review: Karagula

I don't know how much longer we'll be able to enjoy Philip Ridley plays now that we're actually living in one, but at least his latest dystopia is so utterly, unashamedly demented that correlating it to reality needs about as much imagination as it clearly took to write in the first place. Karagula takes place in an alternate reality, on a planet with two moons and - as far as its inhabitants can tell - only a single town surrounded by endless desert. In a twisted pastiche of 1950s Americana, teenagers Dean (Theo Solomon) and Libby (Emily Forbes) are having a romantic evening, spoilt only by Dean's worry that he'll be elected Prom King. It's an honour, but one with the unfortunate side-effect that, like every winning couple going back millennia, the Prom King and Queen will be driven away in an open-topped limo after the dance, to be shot to death in a literal reenactment of the JFK assassination.