Ka Bradley

There’s been a feeling of doom in the air for months now. It’s hard not to do anything but think about the coronavirus headlines. It’s therefore a mark of how powerful Stephen Laughton’s ‘One Jewish Boy’ is that, for the hour-and-a-half, I think of nothing but the scenes in front of me. ‘One Jewish Boy’ tells the story of Jesse (Robert Neumark-Jones) and Alex (Asha Reid). They are flawless distillations of a certain type of Londoner – Laughton’s ear for their performative smart-arse dialogue is humorous, occasionally hilarious. Between 2012 and 2020, during which they date, get married, have a baby, fight constantly and eventually consider divorce, Jesse and Alex run at each other with matching high-octane comedy and fury. They are different in very important ways. Alex is a mixed-race woman from Peckham. Jesse is a middle-class Jewish man from Highgate who, a year or so into their relationship, is the victim of a brutal antisemitic attack. Race, class, gender, identity and trauma are embedded like shards of glass in their very selves, and often the considerable pain Alex and Jesse are in makes it impossible for them to fully empathise with the pain of the other. In one early scene, Alex mocks the concept of inherited trauma; in the very same scene, Jesse lights Hanukkah candles, celebrating a ritual of a people oppressed throughout history. Her response to his re-evaluation of his identity following the attack can be generally classed as impatient. But Jesse himself is flawe

Gillian Greer’s ‘Meat’ opens in what is immediately recognisable as a concept restaurant. A minimalist light, hanging from exposed rafters, illuminates an unvarnished pine table, set with wine glasses and rustic bread. A young woman and a young man face each other across it, their bodies prickling with tension. Behind them hang an enormous, man-sized slab of meat and a partially dismembered pig. It is a mark of how superbly structured and performed ‘Meat’ is that these bloodied carcasses manage to fade quietly into the background. In the foreground, blogger-turned-author Max (India Mullen) confronts laddish ex-boyfriend-turned-chef Ronan (Sean Fox) about the time he raped her – though this word is only used once. Over the course of a confused, emotional dinner at Ronan’s newly opened restaurant, the former couple pick their relationship, and that fateful night, apart, offering conflicting opinions on what happened and where culpability lies. Their dinner is overseen by Ronan’s co-restaurateur Jo (Elinor Lawless), who begins by providing the comic relief from the nail-bitingly tense meal before becoming embroiled in the drama.  Greer’s subtle, acutely observed script allows space for facetiousness, sympathy and humour, all dogged by a broken, greying sadness. In one remarkable flashback scene, Ronan flirts with Jo in a way that, in a rom-com, would be boisterously charming, and in a drama would be entitled and harassing – it all depends on how it’s interpreted. He uses the sam

A woman now living in Mexico City tries to tell us about her youth working as a translator in America, but struggles to pull the story together as the duties of motherhood distract her. A translator in New York is trying to persuade the editor of the obscure publishing house where she works to put out a translation of Mexican author Gilberto Owen’s poems – but he’s only interested in ‘the next Bolaño’. In New York, a Mexican poet named Owen describes his final years. ‘Faces in the Crowd’, adapted by director Ellen McDougall from the novel by Valeria Luiselli (translated by Christina MacSweeney), is a thrilling tangle of unreliable narration, coincidences and half-truths. It opens – and indeed remains – in a family dining room. A broad grey table dominates the space, displaying a baby monitor, a cassette player and a large model of a white house. The ‘narrator’, as we might describe the mother in Mexico City (an electrifying Jimena Larraguivel), is trying to tell us a ‘fiction’ about her experiences when she was younger – when she was, in fact, the translator her book is going to be about. Her words are constantly interrupted by the chatter of her young son and a baby crying in the next room; her husband barely helps, busy as he is staring at the architectural model of the house. It becomes clear her ‘fiction’ wavers in and out of truth. The husband is sometimes asked to do the voices of characters but occasionally halts the storytelling, flummoxed, when he realises his wife i

‘When your physical body is too fucked to be getting on with, that’s your digital body’s time to shine.’ This is the premise of Eve Leigh’s ‘Midnight Movie’, a surreal, visually arresting stagger through a single sleepless night, as a narrator tries to distract herself from the chronic pain of her physical body by careening through the internet. The narrator cannot perform – spaces such as stages are not friendly to bodies like hers, which might ‘glitch’ – so she employs two avatars. Tom Penn plays the drums and speaks the words that are also projected on to the walls; Nadia Nadarajah signs the same words, her movements drifting and dropping with a gorgeous balletic weight. Although the play is set in a bedroom, Rachel Bagshaw’s production plays with the idea of the internet as a space no less real than the physical world. The set design references the uncanny vaporwave aesthetic, right down to the classical statuary and the pastel-and-neon ’80s throwback lighting. As our narrator browses restlessly, the projected text changes font, evoking some of the strange font choices of early web design. Scattered throughout are references to the narrator’s life over several years, as they became aware of their illness. But this allusive play also draws on the death of Elisa Lam, a young student found dead in the rooftop water tank of an LA hotel after security camera footage – widely available online – showed her appearing to argue with an invisible being in a lift. It takes in mytholo

The press night for this immersive theatre adaptation of Jordan Belfort’s infamous memoir ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ was delayed by almost two months as the production was beset with issues. Now that it has finally opened, it’s not been worth the wait.  You have to wonder what director Alexander Wright was thinking when he decided to adapt ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’. What sort of contribution was he hoping to make to the world of theatre? Was there something about ‘Wolf’ that was particularly emotionally resonant, or artistically valuable? Or was it a cynical recognition of what audiences expect from immersive experience and how a play about drugs and money and swearing was an obvious way to cash in? Anyone unfamiliar with Belfort’s memoir or Martin Scorsese’s more famous film version probably won’t follow the story. Suffice to say, the Wolf is Jordan Belfort, and he’s making a lot of money, illegally, on Wall Street. Everyone gets rich and parties, then the FBI close in and it all goes to hell.  Audience members are funnelled into different rooms and up and down stairs to watch various interminable shouty scenes; by the end, many were yawning and shifting restlessly. Much of the set design money has gone into the three rooms with bars (the boardroom in the basement is worth a peek). Most of the other rooms feel like liminal spaces, barely filled by cheap furniture and draped sheets on the ceiling. Character development consists of people yelling ‘fucking’ every seven words and

Across a table in a bare room, Esther faces a man. Under a harsh institutional white light, she gets to know Keith, whom she hates, instinctively and immediately. Under a warm, nightlife-coloured orange glow, she gets to know Chris – a man she smiles at and is charmed by. This is the set-up for ‘Spiderfly’, John Webber’s debut play. Several facts are established early on. Esther’s sister Rachael is gone, and Esther (Lia Burge) is not coping with it well. Imprisoned Keith (Matt Whitchurch with a south London accent) has pleaded innocent to something. Chris (Matt Whitchurch with an RP accent), a jetsetting academic, thinks Esther should stop seeing Keith. It’s morbid, as he puts it. It doesn’t take Columbo to work out where this is going. Though Kirsty Patrick Ward’s production is an hour long, the whole play feels like it takes place in one drawn-out moment: the long, desperate, awkward first date pause. The stage design deliberately toys with this assumption – Keith and Esther could be mistaken for a couple in a crap pub until context clarifies the situation. But the dialogue throughout also wallows in the doldrums of the first date vibe, and despite the noir grit of the plot points, can be monotonous. Maybe it’s a biting, pitch-perfect observation of the tedious way men try to impress, talk over and sell their pre-packaged personalities to women; maybe it’s just a bit boring. Esther’s burgeoning non-relationship with Keith is paralleled by her disintegrating non-relationship

‘When the Crows Visit’ is Anupama Chandrasekhar’s response to Ibsen’s ‘Ghosts’ and – based on the graphic and sickening details of injuries sustained by a woman in the play – the 2012 Delhi bus gang rape. If you think that might be a big reveal to start with, consider this: some people might not want to come to a play described as a ‘dark thriller’ about a ‘violent crime’ and listen to ten minutes of audible offstage rape.Chandrasekhar’s intention is honourable. Based in Chennai, India, her plays often focuses on the violence done to women under the patriarchy, particularly in her home country; ‘When the Crows Visit’ must be born out of a desire to face the horror of systemic abuse head on, challenging the audience to question their role as bystanders and spectators. But its execution is cruelly unsubtle, turning domestic violence, rape and gang rape into set pieces around which a crime procedural plot pivots.‘Ghosts’, Ibsen’s play about the inherited and cyclical nature of oppression, is transposed to modern-day India. His long-suffering widow Mrs Alving has become Hema (Ayesha Dharker), who lives with her ageing mother-in-law in the beautiful house she inherited from her abusive husband. (Richard Kent’s design for the house is gorgeous, a narrative in itself.)Vulnerable, smart and haughty, Hema dotes on her son Akshay (Bally Gill), a failing games developer, who flies home from Mumbai abruptly one evening, abandoning his job. Coincidentally, a girl in Mumbai was gang-raped

If you think creating a play about airline food sounds perverse – like making a Nickelback musical – think again. ‘Gastronomic’, by experimental theatre-makers Curious Directive, offers its audience the chance to experience a seven-course pescatarian tasting menu; that is to say seven high-concept canapés you eat with your hands. The show is set aboard an Airbus A380, where the audience watches the three in-flight chefs prepare and serve the first-class menu.Nora Schmidt (Georgina Strawson) has created the menu, a concept piece called ‘Green and Pleasant Landing’. The airline has insisted she make it British-themed, and the dishes are named things like Sherwood Forest, End of Brighton Pier and Bakewell Snow. But all is not as it seems. Hiding behind these kitschy monikers, Nora has created a menu imbued with personal memories.This subtle and skilful undermining of expectations is a major feature of ‘Gastronomic’. You might walk in expecting the sort of impress-your-date theatre-adjacent immersive food experience that other companies do so well, which are not ‘about’ anything more than the experience. But inside the conceit, ‘Gastronomic’ also functions as a play – about Nora, her sous-chef and former lover Agat (Ani Nelson), and kitchen newbie Luca (Craig Hamilton); about a stowaway on board that Heathrow security are trying to track; about a romance ended by a sudden death; about the connections made by sharing food.Each dish is served to audience members via a miniature ver

In 1992, Dr Shuping Wang and her colleagues reported a hepatitis epidemic in the People’s Republic of China, discovered through batches of contaminated blood given by donors looking to make money through selling their plasma. In 1995, she discovered an HIV epidemic. When she reported her results to Beijing, the central government insisted that she falsify the results. Dr Wang refused, despite the dangers: she is now a US citizen who has never been able to return to China. Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s new play ‘The King of Hell’s Palace’ is inspired by Dr Wang’s story of courage, integrity and sacrifice. In this fictionalised retelling, infectious disease specialist Yin-Yin discovers that greed and negligence have allowed the spread of an epidemic. She fights to expose the truth while Jasmine, the young graduate nurse she helped find a job, climbs through the ranks of the Ministry of Health by increasingly ruthless means.At the same time, a family of poor farmers and migrant workers believe they have hit on the ultimate get-rich-quick scheme by selling their plasma, only to fall victim to the Ministry of Health’s cavalier practices.Under Michael Boyd’s direction, a grandiose, characterful script thundering with scenic explication becomes heavy-handed in its delivery, though the sheer drama of the second half handles the turbulent interpretation more successfully.Millicent Wong, a resourceful actor, does her best to inject some humanity into the character of Jasmine, a one-dimension

In 1936, the new BBC Television Service broadcast its first transmissions from a converted wing in Alexandra Palace. Immersive theatre specialists Rift’s new take on ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ – a site-specific production in the cavernous, pebble-strewn basements of Ally Pally – vaguely references this. Hilary McCool’s costumes are 1930s-inspired, and the play begins as if being filmed by the BBC. Hermia’s father has become her agent. A hand-held camera represents the flower ‘love-in-idleness’, which causes infatuation. And the dual screens at either end of the gallery, which show the faces of the performers as the magic takes hold, are a clever touch that references the mirroring and doubling in the play. It’s nice, though it feels like it could have been pushed further. Audiences are promised a rare chance to explore the rarely-opened, atmospherically-battered basements, but in total we enter three rooms, and most of the play is watched sitting on upturned buckets in a single-vaulted gallery. The moody dark, the mysterious brick alcoves and the minimalist fairy lights combine to make the sort of bosky, twilit dankness that one might find in an ancient Athenian forest stuffed with fairies. Although, what it brings to the play – or changes within it – is negligible.  Still, as an adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s most famous comedies, it’s game and sparky. Phoebe Naughton is particularly good as a brittle, highly-strung Helena, pinch-lipped with paranoid fury when she susp

There are some chaotic energies that are risky to release. The energy of am-dram theatre, for example, or that of abject horniness. More chaotic still: explaining to an audience that a medieval mystery play is not a crime thriller but a religious tableau traditionally performed by guilds of craftsmen. Put them together and it might seem like a recipe for disaster. But in Breach Theatre’s hysterically funny ‘Joan of Leeds’, a send-up of both am-dram and Christmas plays, the chaos coheres into a sparkling, sweetly realised triumph.  Bryony Davies plays Joan, a young woman in fourteenth-century Yorkshire, tempted by a sexy demonic vision (Alex Roberts in a snakeskin bodysuit) to seduce a boy. This transgression gets her sent to a convent. There, trying to devote her life to Jesus, she is harried by visions of the saints in leather harnesses with carnal intentions, and hungrily obsesses over fellow nun Agnes (Rachel Barnes). Eventually the X-rated visions are all too much and she fakes her own death to run away for a life of what she hopes will be erotic bliss.  Director Billy Barrett sets the (astonishingly true) tale of Joan within the story of the am-dram company of the Yorkshire Medieval Players, a flustered bunch of excitable thesps rather overwhelmed by the opportunity to play to such a big audience. Barrett superbly evokes the panicked earnestness of amateur productions – right down to the cardboard scenery – and much of the wild humour comes from his delicious send-up of

If it were possible to bottle the sheer joy of ZooNation Youth Company’s ‘Tales of the Turntable’ and sell it, every other part of the wellness industry would go out of business. It’s strictly good vibes only at this hip hop fantasy ride, ZooNation’s first return to the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank since 2014’s ‘Groove on Down the Road’. ‘Tales of the Turntable’ follows Eric (Basit Ayanwusi), a teenage boy, and his grandpa George (William Pascua). Eric’s a bit of a loner at school, dodging bullies and keeping to himself. He wants to be a DJ but he doesn’t quite have the knack for it – something’s missing. His grandpa decides to teach him about the musical lineage behind the hip hop he loves, using a magic gramophone that transports them back to the 1920s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, to experience jazz, disco, funk, R’n’B and beyond. In each new decade that Eric and his grandpa visit, there is a miniature story. A wanted gangster bursts into a jazz age bar; two be-flared hipsters have a meet-cute in a 70s record store; a couple of rival b-boy gangs start a dance-off. In the meantime, inspired by each new scene, Eric prepares a DJ set for the school talent show. Carrie-Anne Ingrouille’s choreography playfully nods to era-appropriate Charleston feet or vogueing arms while foregrounding some classic, classy breaking and krumping. If the whole ‘magic gramophone’ thing sounds a bit twee, it’s because that, and the hammy voiceover, are the only weak elements. They pitch the sh