Theatre review: A New Play for the General Election

Often when a new play is announced before its contents are finalised - such as the work of Mike Leigh and Anthony Neilson who write their scripts during rehearsal - it remains untitled until just before it opens. They do tend to get a title eventually though, but A New Play for the General Election at the Finborough has remained simply a new play,* which makes me think they're not that concerned that anyone might ever want to revive it. In addition, it was originally announced as being written by Chris Dunkley, but somewhere along the way director Chris New also got bumped up to deviser and author of the piece. So all the signs point to this not being as smooth a creative process as might have been hoped, but great things can come from adversity so no need to dismiss it out of hand. I don't know if they had too much adversity or not enough, but great things have not materialised.

Theatre review: Short and Stark

You can't accuse Short and Stark of having a misleading title: Originally commissioned by various theatres for their short play festivals, Joel Horwood collects all his playlets together into an hour with a bitter tang and the occasional jab of dark humour, with mixed results. Opening and closing with the longest piece, each about 20 minutes long, the first may be the weakest, monologue "Everything I've Ever Done Wrong (Amplified.)" An office worker and sex addict (Simon Yadoo) doesn't actually list all his misdeeds, but the encounter with a temp he relates sums up, he feels, all the worst things about himself. It's presented as if it were a piece of stand-up comedy, delivered into a mike, but is dark and full of self-loathing. And I know there were only eight people in today's matinee audience to choose from, but I couldn't help but take it personally when the actor delivered an entire speech about arseholes towards me. Literal arseholes.

Theatre review: The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution

Caryl Churchill's The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution, based on Dr Franz Fanon's observations of the 1950s Algerian revolution, dates from 1972 but had never been performed before the Finborough added it to its Sunday-Tuesday repertory slot. The after-effects of torture are the play's focus, not just on the direct victims - indeed the only character actually to have been tortured is entirely silent, and played here by a disconcerting puppet - but on everyone who's come into any kind of contact with the violence. We're in a mental hospital during the uprising the colonial French resolutely refuse to call a war, and its resources are being stretched to breaking point by the influx of patients whom Fanon (Miles Mitchell) observes, mostly silently and without getting directly involved.