What is the Royal Court theatre for? Is it a space that stages innovative new writing, or does it prefer to do documentary theatre? Is it concerned with reaching out beyond its regular audiences, or is it more focused on its own internal problems?
Can a play peak too soon? That's the quandary that attends the Old Vic airing of Eureka Day, Jonathan Spector's on-point if overextended comedy that was written prior to the pandemic but has absolutely come into its own just now. A skewering of liberal pieties that puts one in mind of a fellow theatrical satirist like Bruce Norris (Clybourne Park), Eureka Day takes few prisoners on the way to a flat-seeming ending.
Lisa has lost an hour in a (somewhat contrived) temporal glitch. As a consequence, her world is always sliding off-kilter, not quite making sense, things floating in and out of memory. A watchmaker (himself somewhat loosely tethered to reality) tells her that she needs to get it back as a lost hour wields great power and can fall into the wrong hands. Lisa embraces her quest and travels to the strange land of Dissocia.
Max is big and black and Tyler is slight and (very) white, an odd couple trapped in a dual-control car as Max barks out his instructions and Tyler prepares for his driving test. If their relationship is to get started, like the clutch of the Vauxhall Corsa, it’s going to have to find its biting point. When the men reveal a little more of their insecurities, it does and we’re away.
A tender love story has arrived at the Kings Head theatre from the US, where its author, Tanya Barfield, is an award-winning playwright for both television and theatre. The plot is simple: two women — one white, one Black — meet in an office where one is a supervisor, the other a science teacher turned temp, and their lives become entwined over the next 25 years.
It’s only nine years since Moira Buffini’s Handbagged had its premiere at Kilburn’s Tricycle theatre (renamed the Kiln in 2018), but it triumphantly returns to the same venue as a copper-bottomed classic. Its timing is uncanny: Margaret Thatcher was dying the year it made its debut; now it resurfaces just as its other protagonist, HM the Queen, has passed away.
Britain is a divided nation, but one of the divisions that we don’t hear that much about is that between Pakistani gay men. Written by Waleed Akhtar (who also stars in this impressively heartfelt two-hander), The P Word is about the differences in life experiences between one asylum seeker and one Londoner, and comes to the Bush Theatre in a production which has been supported by Micro Rainbow, the first safe house in the UK for LGBTQ asylum seekers and refugees.
Hell hath no fury like a teenager scorned. In this perplexing play, we see a highly successful doctor put on trial by his rebellious 18-year-old daughter and found miserably wanting.
It can’t have been an easy pitch. “Popes. Both foreign, yes. German and Argentinian – sorry, can’t change either. Eighty-something and the other’s a decade younger. Mainly just talking about their pasts and their different approaches to Roman Catholic theology. No chorus of angels, no. Can't cross-promote with Sister Act, no. We thought we’d open in Northampton…”
Antigone, the forceful young woman who takes on the male establishment, has long resonated with idealists; Sophocles' play, written about 441 BCE, has been revived and adapted frequently, often reflecting different times and causes. Among others, Polly Findlay's National Theatre production a decade ago referenced contemporary politics, including terrorism.