Boudica

by Tristan Bernays

seen at Shakespeare's Globe on 12 September 2017

Eleanor Rhode directs Gina McKee as Boudica queen of the Iceni (a tribe in what is now East Anglia) in this new play with Joan Iyiola and Natalie Simpson as her daughters Alonna and Blodwynn, Forbes Masson as Cunobeline and Abraham Popoola as Bladvoc, kings respectively of the neighbouring tribes of the Trinovantes and the Belgae.

The sources for Boudica's story are fragmentary, and the earliest are of course in Latin and based on a Roman point of view hardy sympathetic to a rebellious queen who for a short time posed a threat to the province of Britannia - although of course after her demise she could be safely used as a rhetorical device to point up contrasts between barbarian integrity and the corruption of the imperial court.

Faith Healer

by Brian Friel

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 1 August 2016

Directed by Lyndsey Turner and designed by Es Devlin, this production features Stephen Dillane as Frank, the faith healer, Gina McKee as his partner Grace and Ron Cook as Teddy his manager.

The play consists of four monologues given by Frank, Grace, Freddy then Frank again, each actor alone on the stage in a different setting, each recounting directly to the audience some episodes from Frank's itinerant journeys around Wales, Scotland and Ireland as a faith healer who occasionally (but not often) effects cures.

It is an extraordinary theatrical device, removing the usual situation in which characters on stage can interact with one another, and instead relying on extended reminiscence to reveal both character and narrative. Matters are further complicated by the fact that the accounts of the three speakers differ so markedly in some details that it is impossible to know exactly what happened; or rather, it becomes necessary for the audience to include these contradictions in its assessment of the characters and their experiences. Although the general shape of the 'story' seems relatively clear, the different accounts of it are impossible to reconcile with absolute finality.