Safe Space

by Jamie Bogyo

seen at the Minerva Theatre Chichester on 25 October 2026

Roy Alexander Weise directs Jamie Bogyo (the playwright) as Connor, Ernest Kingsley Jr as Isaiah, Céline Buckens as Annabelle, Bola Akeju as Stacy and Ivan Opik as Omar in Safe Space, a play using fictional characters to examine the pressure from Yale students to rename Calhoun College since John C Calhoun, a prominent Senator and Vice President after whom it was named, had supported slavery. (The college was renamed in 2017.)

Connor, a mildly autistic white student, and Isaiah, a Black student, share a room in Calhoun College and also belong to the Whiffenpoofs, Yale's prestigious a cappella singing group. Their friendship, such as it is, arises from this common interest, but on other matters, such as the issue of renaming the college, they disagree with one another, Connor intensely against and Isaiah quietly for. In the meantime Annabelle, Connor's girlfriend, feels she is mentoring the newcomer Stacy and is then shocked to find that Stacy has successfully won the presidency of the Women's Leadership club that she was also standing for, and that the freshman student is not a naive Black newcomer to Yale but on the contrary a savvy and ruthless operator.

In a series of scenes the tensions between these four and the more overtly activist Omar (who has prepared the latest petition for renaming the college) are revealed, though the cultural references lying behind the scenario are occasionally obscure, requiring an attentive reading of the program notes to become more clear. This means that the tone of the play veers between an earnest investigation of the political questions and a not always convincing series of scenes which could more easily belong in a campus comedy. The performances are good, and the a cappella singing excellent, but the characters are perhaps too flat to bear the weight of the issues.

The staging, designed by Khadija Raza, impressively manages a retractable platform stage which is obscured by a painted screen when exterior scenes are required, but in which various rooms are set for the interior scenes: Connor and Isaiah's room; Omar's room; the anteroom of the Principal's office.

Hedda

by Tanika Gupta inspired by Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre Richmond on 21 October 2025

Hettie Macdonald directs Pearl Chanda as Hedda, Joe Bannister as George (Jörgen) Tesman, Milo Twomey as John Brack, Bebe Cave as Alice Smith (Mrs Elvsted), Jake Mann as Leonard (Ejlert Lövborg), Rina Fatania as Shona (Berte) and Caroline Harker as Aunt Julia (Juliane) in Tanika Gupta's adaptation of Ibsen's 1890 play Hedda Gabler, cleverly re-imagined as taking place in London in 1948.

In this setting Hedda is a film star of the 1930s and 40s determined to retire rather than keep up the pretence of her public persona. The social constraints which suffocate the original Hedda are here replaced by the trauma created by long suppressing her identity as an Anglo-Indian in order to succeed in a film world bedevilled by ingrained racism (the parallel with the careers of such stars as Merle Oberon is obvious). Aristocratic hauteur is replaced by Hedda's consuming insecurity masked by reserve, but the consequent ruthlessness remains as formidable as ever.

Around her the constellation of hapless academics - her second-rate husband and the fragile alcoholic genius - are replaced by rival screenwriters, and the calculating judge Brack by a powerful film producer. In perhaps the boldest realignment, the household servant becomes Hedda's ayah; the menfolk and Aunt Julia cannot understand the hold this figure has on her mistress, but there is a clever twist which explains all to us but remains opaque to the characters. on stage

The great scenes of the original - the disparaging of Julia's hat, the condescension towards George, the manipulation of Alice and the corruption of Leonard, Brack's machinations - all survive and thrive in this new atmosphere, and the cast deliver exemplary performances in a fascinating variation on Ibsen's themes. The evocation of the prejudiced world of glamorous film-making is transmitted with shocking directness when the men talk contemptuously about half-castes, and the threat to Hedda's position is made abundantly clear when the details of Leonard's screenplay are discussed - he has used Hedda's own story in fictional form to create what the others see, without irony, as a masterpiece of cinema, where she sees only an unforgivable personal betrayal. (In the original the details of Lövborg's manuscript are not revealed.)

There is thus slightly more melodrama in the situation, but nonetheless this was a fascinating evening.

Born with Teeth

by Liz Duffy Adams

seen at Wyndham's Theatre on 15 October 2025

Daniel Evans directs Ncuti Gatwa as Kit (Christopher Marlowe) and Edward Bluemel as Will (William Shakespeare) in Liz Duffy Adams's sharply observed two-hander imagining that the playwrights collaborated (somewhat uneasily) on the three Henry VI plays commonly attributed to Shakespeare.

The question of multiple authorship, or co-authorship, particularly of these early plays in the canon, has been discussed for a long time, initially based on anecdote and intuition, and more recently bolstered by increasingly sophisticated tools of textual analysis. The programme notes include an article explaining how in 2016 the editors of the New Oxford Shakespeare came to include Marlowe as a contributing author to these three plays, and how this in turn inspired Liz Duffy Adams to write her play.

After an explosive assault on our eyes and ears with flashing lights and electronic noise (repeated at each break to show the passage of a year: 1591, 1592, and then the fateful day of Marlowe's death, 30 May 1593) we are presented with a bare room the walls of which are banked with lights. There is a large writing table. Here the two playwrights meet, Will initially star-struck and unsure, Kit swaggering and flirtatious, but also keen to involve the naif Will in his world of spies, all under the guise of providing an impecunious young man with the security of powerful patronage. Will, more strait-laced, demurs, irritating the mercurial Kit with his high-mindedness. Subtle jokes abound relating to half-thought-out echoes of what will become famous phrases, while Will at least twice reminds the patronising Kit that they are the same age: he is not just a boy to Kit's worldly-wise man.

The two characters are obviously chalk and cheese, yet there is an undeniable spark between them, giving rise to passionate speeches about life, love and art, and resulting in a curiously effective collaboration in place of a rivalry which could have ruined the whole project. Will gains in confidence as Kit recognises his skill and growing power as a playwright: there are fascinating scenes in which they critique each other's work by interleaving their contributions to the work in progress.

Both actors are masters of their parts, Gatwa supremely confident in his tight-fitting leathers, commanding the stage with grandiose movements and campily brandishing a ridiculously long quill pen, but vulnerable when genuine feelings catch him unawares, and Bluemel initially diffident in less flashy attire, but with an almost boyish allure in a floppy shirt. (Costumes and set are skilfully designed by Joanna Scotcher.) Will's unease never entirely leaves him: he is constantly adjusting his trousers to fit neatly at this waist, as if unsure that his clothes really fit him. Small details such as these enliven stunningly engaging performances from both men in a play that fizzes with energy and an infectious love of the theatre. 

The audience's enthusiasm was fully justified.

Lord of the Flies

by Nigel Williams adapted from William Golding's novel

seen at the Chichester Festival Theatre on 11 October 2025

William Golding's famous novel is now over 70 years old and this stage adaptation was written in 1991 for a school production and first performed professionally in 1995. But the big question at the heart of Lord of the Flies still remains all too pertinent: to what extent is "civilised society" just a veneer concealing humanity's innate cruelty and violence. The issue is crystallised in the story of a group of British schoolboys - ostensibly the exemplars of good behaviour - stranded by a plane crash on an uninhabited tropical island with no surviving adults. What will they do?

Notoriously they start with high ideals - mostly suggested by Piggy (Alfie Jallow), who sees the reluctant Ralph (Sheyi Cole) as the obvious person to lead - but these are compromised by boyish inattention to detail, high spirits, and eventually the disruptions caused by the charismatic Jack (Tucker St. Ivany) who disputes Ralph's authority and causes a fateful split. Things only go from bad to worse as Jack's gang becomes increasingly rebellious and violent, partly through inadvertence and partly through Jack's visions of "the Beast".

It is difficult to depict a tropical island on a bare stage, and difficult too to present the group of boys as young enough to match those in the original novel, or even for that matter in Peter Brook's celebrated film. Director Antony Lau and designer Georgia Lowe have made virtues of necessity: the stage is utterly bare, the backstage area starkly revealed to the audience, and it is littered with the moveable crates one sees at airports, which make for handy props. The boys are all young actors, some making their professional debut, but clearly at the very end of their schooldays if not beyond them. In a space that is unadorned, surrounded by black walls and black crates, the cast evokes the island with impressive conviction, and also manages to convey the curious mixture of swagger and insecurity which might typify the reactions of young boys cast on their own resources. Wisely, the boys we see are the "big'uns", while the "little'uns" (the youngest survivors of the crash) are only referred to.

At times it was difficult to understand exactly what was happening: there was too much noise and frenzy on stage. At times there was a strange disconnect between the theatrical space and the imagined space: towards the end of the play Jack seated himself at a piano and gave a spirited rendition of "The Great Pretender" as the chaos that he had unleashed began to spread. But at other times the spectacle was completely engrossing, and the group dynamics superbly realised. The boyish taunts ("stupid" being the ultimate put-down or insult), the playground bullying suddenly turned frighteningly serious, the anxiousness to please authority and the nervousness when authority seemed to be absent, were all convincing. Perhaps the full horror of what happens was weakened by the inescapable fact that the cast was older than the boys they were playing, but it was a fine production of a powerful adaptation..