Theatre review: Shifters

Benedict Lombe's Shifters is one of those two-handers that follows a couple who seem perfect for each other but may or may not figure it out by the end of the show. And while it doesn't actually take place across the multiverse, there's musing about the choices we make and the different paths they could have led to, which makes it yet another show to give me flashbacks to Constellations, surely one of the most influential shows on British theatre so far this century. (I'm not knocking it, it's better than when it looked a couple of years ago like every young theatremaker was going to fill the stage with solemn, slo-mo Yaël Farber processions.) Part of Lombe's twist on the formula is that instead of starting as a rom-com and building to tragedy, Shifters' leads have tragedy built into their stories early on. Dre(am) (Tosin Cole) first notices Des(tiny)* (Heather Agyepong) as the only other black kid in his new school in Crewe.

theatre review: ear for eye

et tu, debbie?

ideally, if coming back to the theatre after over a week sick, i’d choose something short and fairly fluffy to ease myself back in. things don’t always work out that way though, and with an acclaimed new debbie tucker green play in my diary fluffy was never going to be on the cards; you’d have thought short would at least be a given with the usually concise tucker green at the helm, but ear for eye plays out as a two-and-a-quarter hour epic with no interval. told in three distinct parts, each of which could have been a show in its own right but which feed into each other in subtle ways, the play is a look at the black experience in both america and the uk, one of its themes (and i wouldn’t want to pretend i can unpick every layer the writer’s built into her deceptively pared-down dialogue) being the way that even though we don’t have the epidemic of police shootings that plagues african-americans, this side of the pond doesn’t necessarily have the moral high ground, and black british people feel many of the same pressures.

Theatre review: They Drink It In The Congo

In among various classics that the Almeida is staging over the next year or so are a pair of premieres, starting with Adam Brace's look at white guilt and a country often called the most dangerous place in the world - but in the UK still probably best remembered as a soft drink jingle - They Drink It In The Congo. Stef (Fiona Button) works for a government-sponsored charity organising a festival of Congolese culture to raise awareness of the country and its various horrors. Together with the Congo-born Anne-Marie (Anna-Maria Nabirye) she leads the steering committee that is trying to agree on the acts, as well as ensuring there's an authentically Congolese voice in the decision-making. But even the seemingly simple elements prove impossible to reconcile, and that's before the organisers start receiving death threats.