“Who’d be a woman?... Who in their right mind would choose all that?” The question comes towards the end of a conversation where two former lovers are comparing notes on their tumultuous recent past.
One of them, Jo, has just had a baby. The other, Harry, has taken hormones to transition from being a man to being a woman. In answer to the question, Harry replies, “No-one does though, do they? No-one chooses… Some of us just come the long way round.”
Over the last few months, celebrity-driven West End productions have suffered some inglorious crashes. So there was a certain degree of trepidation at the opening night for this star vehicle for Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell. For five minutes, it must be confessed, this reviewer was worried; it seemed so over-miked, so hyper, so, well PINK. But between the diamond-sharp banter and the endorphin fizz, something started to happen, and suddenly it erupted into one of the best parties in town.
The date, projected behind the stage before a word is spoken, is a clue - 14th April 1912. “Why so specific?” was my first thought. My second was, “Ah, yes”.
Our humanity is defined not only by our use of language, but also by our sense of the spiritual. Whether you are a believer or not, it’s hard to deny the attractions of religion for billions around the world. Sounds portentous? Yeah. Okay, you’re now in the zone for Beau Willimon’s new play East Is South, currently at the Hampstead Theatre, a work which suggests that the digital world can also be mystical place.
Since when has new writing become so passionless? Mike Bartlett is one of the country’s premiere playwrights and his new play, Unicorn, is about radical sexuality and desire. It’s already made a big splash by being put straight on in the West End, yet the experience of watching it feels like a real turn off. It’s a masterclass of bad writing and unemotional acting.
I always advocate in favour of more sci-fi plays, and over the past decade there have been a gratifying number of them. But one essential element of any futuristic fantasy must be its power to convince. And it is precisely this that is missing from Lauren Mooney and James Yeatman’s More Life, currently in the studio space of the Royal Court.
Russia.
Playwrights who work for decades often acquire a moniker. In the case of Howard Brenton, who began his career as a left-winger in the turbulent 1970s, the name is The History Man. Over the past decade, or so, he has written brilliantly about historical figures such as, among others, Anne Boleyn, Charles I, Lawrence of Arabia – and many more.
Annie Ernaux’s semi-autobiographical book Les Années charts a woman’s life across time and space, history and memory, through what the author describes as a collective consciousness. Perhaps the most satisfying thing about Eline Arbo’s superb adaptation is that it projects this idea through, fittingly, one of the most truly collective performances London has seen in years.
We live in tragic times given over to cataclysmic events that require outsized emotions in return. That may be one reason to account for the uptick, therefore, in Greek drama, which includes not one but two Oedipi, various adaptations of Antigone, and the arrival on the commercial West End of the obvious companion piece to Oedipus, namely Elektra – the K in the title perhaps nodding to a landscape in which people exist to kill.