At The Arcola Theatre, London

“It ticks all the boxes”

A three-metre high cage separates us from Martin, a convicted killer. He’s a troubled young man, never receives visitors, orphaned. Cancer killed his mother, he killed his father. All he has, when allowed into this cage, is a basketball and the hoop to aim for.

There are no Hannibal Lecter moments, but that is for the better. ‘T’ introduces him to us. He is a writer/director and putting on a play about Martin.

Trevor White

Thebes Land is a play-within-a-play-within-a-play. Moments are created and recreated. Sometimes the audience are involved, mostly we watch events unfold. It’s part lecture, part biography, part autobiography, part drama.

One would think, therefore, that this overly-developed style is either too dumb or too clever for its own good. Instead, it is pitched perfectly to seamlessly flow into all the genres and leave before it gets too settled.

There are four quarters, plus overtime. The same length as a basketball match. The intelligence of the script doesn’t stop there, though. Thebes, Oedipus, the introduction of Freddie (the actor playing Martin now plays an actor playing Martin). Plus the surveillance cameras, their ‘live’ feeds shown on screens above the cage, showing the action as it happens/happened.

Alex Austin

Amazing how something so complicated can become so beautifully easy. This play won the Best Production at the 2016 OffWestEnd Awards and has reunited its original cast to open the 10th Casa Festival of Latin American Theatre. It was written was the Franco-Uruguayan Sergio Blanco, with the translation and adaptation by Daniel Goldman – who also directs.

CASA 2017

A play that works on so many levels can over-complicate things, but Goldman keeps it just on the right side of believability. Staged like The Young Vic’s Yerma or the classic Trafford Tanzi, it’s basically in the round with the house lights up. There is nowhere to hide for the cast: Trevor White plays ‘T’, the likeable Hugh Laurie-esque storyteller; Alex Austin revels in the dark Martin and the lighter Freddie.

The is a stunning production. It makes you laugh, cry, think. It ticks all the boxes. Even though the audience spend all evening on the outside of the cage, looking in, we are, in reality, in there with them. Probing, searching, discovering. What we find may be scary, but it is common to us all.

At one point, T promises to send a postcard. Martin requests a picture of a moose. When we leave the auditorium, we are given feedback cards. What’s the picture on the front? What else.

Running time: 2 hours 15 (plus an interval).

Production Photographs: Alex Brenner.

Twitter: #ThebesLand, #casa2017, @CasaFestival, @ArcolaTheatre

Facebook: @CasaLatinAmericanTheatreFestival

Performances until 7th October 2017.

Venue: Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London E8 3DL.

www.arcolatheatre.com – 020 7503 1646.

Monday – Saturday 7.30pm

Saturday Matinees at 3pm

Tickets £10-£22 – Pay What You Can Tuesdays (limited allocation, in person from 6pm)

What is your book related job?

I’m an academic (university lecturer) who specialises in genre fiction, particularly the representation of disability in literature. This means that I spend a lot of my time talking with students and colleagues about books, and reading fiction and what other people have written about it. A big part of my job is teaching students and all the administration that goes with that, but another key part is producing new interpretations of or theories about literary texts, which I present at conference and publish in journals and books for other academics. You can see some of my presentations and publications on my website.

What is the most rewarding part of it?

It’s a privilege to be able to spend so much of my time reading, writing, thinking, and talking about books. Teaching is also very rewarding: I love the performance element of lecturing, and it’s immensely satisfying when a student who has struggled finally grasps a key idea or offers a really original insight. Like most academics, I could earn more, and work fewer hours, doing something else—it’s not a job you do unless you’re passionate about it.

Recently, I’ve been working on a new project, the Disability and Romance Project. I’m working with romance readers, writers, and publishers to explore how readers respond to depictions of disability in romance novels, and why authors write disabled characters. I’ve found it really satisfying to work directly with people in the industry, and there’s been a really phenomenal response from the romance community so far, with over 500 people taking part in our survey of romance readers.

What do you consider to be your major successes?

The academic job market is so over-subscribed at the moment that managing to get a stable academic job has to be considered a big success for anyone in my field – after my PhD I spent several years doing the academic equivalent of temping before I got a permanent position, and lots of people aren’t that fortunate.

More recently, I’ve just finished writing an academic book on the representation of disability in genre fiction, which will be published by Liverpool University Press. It explores how the portrayal of disability in science fiction, fantasy, horror, crime and romance might shape public attitudes towards disabled people, and it’s been a really long-term project; I first had the idea for the book almost ten years ago! I was also really pleased to receive the Romance Writers of America Academic Research Grant for the Disability and Romance Project. It was great to have that confirmation that one of the key organisations for romance values my research.

Have you always loved books, and what are you reading at the moment?

I’ve always loved books, and been a voracious reader. When I was a child I’d switch my light off and pretend I was asleep when my parents came to check on me last thing at night…then put the light back on and read for hours after they went to bed! As usual, I’m reading a mixture of non-fiction academic books and genre fiction. On the non-fiction side, I’m reading Mad at School by Margaret Price, a brilliant book about mental illness and the university system. I’ve just finished The Burial Hour, the latest in Jeffery Deaver’s series of novels about quadriplegic investigator Lincoln Rhyme, and I’ve started Rook Song, a science fiction novel by Naomi Foyle, after really enjoying Astra, her previous novel.

Bio: Ria Cheyne (@riacheyne) researches literature and disability at Liverpool Hope University, where she is a Senior Lecturer in Disability and Education. She runs the Disability and Romance Project – follow on Twitter or Facebook.

As everyone knows by now, Frost Magazine is interested in literature, not to mention drama, and painting… Well, the arts in general, but especially literature. So have a look at Cheltenham’s mouth-watering line-up.

Around 1,000 speakers will take part in more than 550 events, from literary heavyweights and emerging talent, to the very best poetry and celebration of classic literature, including Salman Rushdie, Alan Hollinghurst, Sarah Waters, Amit Chaudhuri, Roddy Doyle, Claire Tomalin, Paul Hawkins, Philippa Gregory, Michael Morpurgo, Ian Rankin, Joanne Harris and the 2017 Man Booker Prize shortlisted authors.

The packed poetry programme includes Jackie Kay, John Burnside, Michael Symmons Roberts and Lemn Sissay as well as the stars of the next generation with Andrew McMillan, Luke Wright, Hollie McNish, Rob Auton, Inua Ellams and Sabrina Mahfouz.

This year’s Festival theme Who Do We Think We Are? will ask key questions about British identity and celebrate Britain’s rich literary and cultural heritage, and Cheltenham will also welcome five Guest Curators bringing fresh perspectives and voices:

Will Gompertz, BBC Arts Editor; Sarah Moss, novelist, travel writer and academic; Robin Niblett, Director of Chatham House; Jess Phillips, Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley; and Nikesh Shukla, author, editor and campaigner.

Sounds like a feast, doesn’t it. Lots of my favourites… Must get along.

Reviewed by PAUL VATES

“The story unfolds with a subtlety one would expect only from a good writer.”

It is 1949. George Orwell is in hospital with TB. The outspoken author is struggling and sees salvation in Sonia Bronwell, an assistant magazine editor twenty years his junior. He proposes to her, placing her in an unexpected dilemma. George is rich. The love of her life, Maurice, is married to another woman. Decisions, decisions….

Mrs Orwell has deservedly transferred from The Old Red Lion pub theatre to Southwark Playhouse. This was my third attempt to see the play and I am very pleased I didn’t give up. Tony Cox’s script is that almost-disturbing mix of old-fashioned crispness with the depth that modern audiences desire. Nothing seems to be happening most of the time, yet the story unfolds with a subtlety one would expect only from a good writer – Cox must be on.

Cressida Bonas plays the eponymous character, with style and grace, but without much edge. She doesn’t quite attain the gravitas that the titular character requires. Instead, Peter Hamilton Dyer’s stand-out performance as George I think usurps her.  It’s not that she is weak. Far from it, but she is on stage with a brilliant cast: Edmund Digby Jones plays Lucian Freud with a sexy ooziness; Rosie Ede plays the Nurse both strict and kindly; Robert Stocks plays Fred Warburg, Orwell’s agent, business-like and sure, seeing and knowing everything, but seldom giving his own view – apart from a roaring speech near the climax of the piece.

Jimmy Walters’ direction is quiet and understated. He has allowed the actors time to breathe with a play that, on the page, must appear quite dry and unappealing, so thick is it with conversation instead of action.

The set was designed by Rebecca Brower and includes, apart from the hospital room, the corridor leading to the room. At first this felt like a gimmick – the actors being heard via a microphone – yet it soon became an ingenious device, to hint at the outside world that is only a door away and what is happening behind George’s back.

Mrs Orwell is a slow-burner. It creeps up on you and clings to you. That is a good thing.

Produced by Proud Haddock.

Images: Samuel Taylor.

Performances until Saturday 23rd September 2017.

Monday-Saturday at 8pm, with Tuesday and Saturday matinees at 3.30pm.

(No performances 14th,15th,16th).

Running time: 1 hr 55 (plus an interval)

Southwark Playhouse, 77-85 Newington Causeway, London SE1 6BD

www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk

Twitter: @ProudHaddock, @swkplay, #MrsOrwell

Tickets are priced at £20 (£16 concessions) available from the theatre’s website on by calling the Box Office on 020 7407 0234.

Review by Chris Donaldson.

Interspersed between the canon of Star Wars films most of us know, is another body of work – mostly books but a couple of animated tv series also – that expand the universe.  They flesh out minor characters and add back story to various events that are briefly alluded to in the films.  These works are fodder for the fanboys and girls and possibly ignored by the rest of us who don’t crave that much depth.

The latest is now with us, and Delilah S Dawson’s Star Wars : Phasma deals with the origin story of the eponymous Captain Phasma, a female officer of the first order (bad guys), briefly introduced in ‘The force awakens’ and apparently to be given a bigger role in the forthcoming ‘The last Jedi’.  In the films she is portrayed – behind a chrome mask- by Gwendoline Christie.

Like all things Star Wars this moves at a cracking pace, it’s immediacy heightened by the use of third person present tense, which keeps us in the heart of the action throughout the opening, and switches to past tense during the flashback chapters that introduce us to a young Phasma.  These chapters are the recollections of Vi Moradi, a captured resistance spy (good guys) held on board the ‘Absolution’ a first order Star destroyer ( Resurgent class don’t ya know…) as she is tortured by a mysterious crimson armoured Stormtrooper who, with a secret agenda of his own, is obsessed by Phasma.

Their battle of wills is the catalyst for the exposition and most of the drama, and their relationship has a well structured development with some surprise twists and turns, further than that I won’t spoil…

The writing is economical throughout, and I think it’s fair to say, well serves the universe it inhabits.  Do you need to read it to enjoy/endure the films? No.  If you’re a big fan already is it worth a read? Well yes (and you bought the hardback on September 1st and read it the same day).  Dawson knows and has obvious affection for this universe, and if you want some competent backstory to your favourite Space farm boys, droids et al, you should give it a look, either on Ebook, or the heftily priced hardback (20 of your earth pounds thank you).

Star Wars: Phasma by Delilah S Dawson. Published by Century on 1st Sept 2017.  Price £20.00. Ebook available

Christopher Donaldson is the award winning author of Not a Girl.