Stratford East

TOWIE meets Blasted by way of the Iliad in this breezily provocative fourth play from rising star playwright Ava Pickett. Bloodsport is both fresh but also pleasingly of a piece with Pickett’s other work, insofar as like her previous plays – even breakthrough Tudor smash 1536 – it’s set in Essex. In fact it’s not even her first play set in a slightly vulgar Essex living room (although the decor here is a lot whiter than in her very funny adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma). Bloodsport takes place in the aftermath of a Trojan War of sorts, although there’s no Greece or Troy but rather some kind of civil unrest that’s gripped the UK. Smartly, Pickett never defines precisely what this is or exactly what has happened: it may have been a gang war, it may have been closer to the recent nationalist protests (it’s clear the Trojan equivalents were deemed to be ‘foreign’ on some level), it may have been a full-scale civil war. When Gerard Monaco’s terrifyingly toxic Agamemnon-proxy Mario comes back into the home he shares with his wife Cee (Laura Aikman), he talks about ‘New England’, as if the country has been remade wholesale. He’s joined by his malleable younger brother Marcus (Jay Taylor, in the Menelaus role) and a traumatised, blood-spattered Helen (Michelle Dockery), shivering in her nightwear, who everyone seems to be trying to ignore.  After an awkward homecoming defined by Mario’s triumphal belligerence, all signs - including the intro from Ethan Moorhouse’s poetic...

Stratford East’s 2026 pantomime is clearly going down an irreverent, youth-orientated direction as playwright and performer Yolanda Mercy takes her turn in the writing seat. As you might imagine, it’s a version of the Robin Hood myth set in contemporary London, and while Robin Hood is not itself classic panto fodder, Stratford East has a long history of pulling off improbable Christmas shows.