History is a prison. Often, you can’t escape. It imprints its mark on people, environments and language. And nowhere is this more true that in Northern Ireland.
BOUDICA – Shakespeare’s Globe
Some time in the past, there is an island of disparate peoples happily carrying on with their lives. Each group has its own rules, traditions and customs.
LIONS & TIGERS – Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
Tanika Gupta explores an episode from her family history that is both highly relevant and humane.
ODD MAN OUT – Hope Theatre
A middle-aged, gay Welshman contemplates the English class he teaches in Hong Kong. Amongst the students is Windy, the Chinese woman with whom he shares his bed.
SALOME – National Theatre
Is God female? It says a lot about Yaël Farber’s pompous and overblown new version of this biblical tale at the National Theatre that, near the end of an almighty 110-minute extravaganza, all reason seemed to have vacated my brain, and its empty halls, battered by a frenzy of elevated music, heaven-sent lighting and wildly gesturing actors, were suddenly open to the oddest ideas.
CHINGLISH – Park Theatre
Chinglish was first staged in on Broadway in 2011, and is set in Guiyang (pop four million). Daniel Cavanaugh, an American who heads a firm of Ohio sign-makers, wants to secure a deal with a local cultural centre, whose public signage has been rendered ridiculous by gross mistranslations into English: “Deformed Man’s Restroom” instead of Disabled Toilet.
MADE IN INDIA – Soho Theatre
The all-female play looks at the complex and controversial landscape of commercial surrogacy in India through the microcosmic relationship between three parties – the surrogate, the doctor and the mother.
MADE IN INDIA – Soho Theatre
Satinder Chohan’s punningly titled Made in India, has been touring the country since January and now arrives at the Soho Theatre in London.
DUBAILAND – Finborough Theatre
Set in Dubai, the glowing capital city of the United Arab Emirates, it tells two parallel stories: one is the conflict between two English twentysomethings, Jamie and Clara, who travel to the Gulf for opposite reasons.
THEY DRINK IT IN THE CONGO – Almeida Theatre
New play about Africa’s deadliest conflict is more of a heroic failure than a successful drama.
LAWRENCE AFTER ARABIA – Hampstead Theatre
Howard Brenton’s new study of desert warrior T E Lawrence is more like a frustrating mirage than a nourishing oasis.