Theatre review: Skeleton Crew

Michael Longhurst's run at the Donald and Margot Warehouse ends with something of a whimper, as the original play scheduled to close his tenure had to be cancelled - I think for contractual reasons - and instead director Matthew Xia was given Dominique Morisseau's Skeleton Crew. It's a play that does feel connected to the last few years at the venue, which have included two Lynn Nottage plays about the decline of American industry in the 2000s, but while the themes are similar Morisseau doesn't quite have the spark to her writing that elevates Nottage. Set in the break room of the last small car factory left in Detroit in 2008, the workforce have been pared back to a bare minimum but the four employees we meet are trying to convince themselves that the factory's closure in the next couple of years isn't as inevitable as it looks.

Theatre review: Three Sisters

For London's second major Three Sisters of the year the National filters Chekhov through Inua Ellams, coming up with a new play that's the same but different: Olya, Masha and Irina are now Lolo (Sarah Niles) Nne Chukwu (Natalie Simpson) and Udo (Racheal Ofori,) turn-of-the-twentieth century Russia becomes a remote part of Nigeria in the late 1960s, and the sisters long for Lagos, not Moscow. The characters have new names but in the first and fourth acts especially they follow their counterparts' trajectories closely, but it's in the middle two acts that the play most takes on a new identity. The play opens in 1967 in Biafra, at the start of what would turn out to be a failed bid for independence from Nigeria. It's youngest sister Udo's birthday, which is also the anniversary of their father's death; he was a general who moved the family from Lagos to a remote village to prepare the rebel army for the coming uprising, but with him gone they’re left with no purpose, and only soldiers for company.