Wife

by Samuel Adamson

seen at the Kiln Theatre on 26 June 2019

Indhu Rubasingham directs Richard Cant, Karen Fishwick, Pamela Hardman, Joshua James, Calam Lynch and Sirine Saba in this inventive and intriguing family saga starting in 1959 and looking forward to 2039.

But 'family saga' is only part of it. The play opens with perhaps the most notorious slammed door in theatre history, marking the departure of Nora in Ibsen's A Doll's House, being performed in 1959. We see glimpses of other performances of this play at crucial moments in the story in 1988, 2019, and another generation later; the challenge Nora poses as she insists on personal autonomy at the expense of conventional marriage, and even of motherhood, is the central concern of Wife, and it's fairly clear that there is still no satisfactory accommodation between the demands of self-fulfillment and the compromises needed to survive a relationship.

Saint Joan

by Bernard Shaw

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 15 February 2017

Josie Rourke directs Gemma Arterton as Joan, Fisayo Akinade as the Dauphin, Richard Cant as Poulegny and de Stogumber, Hadley Fraser as Dunois, Jo Stone-Fewings as Warwick, Niall Buggy as the Archbishop, Rory Keenan as the Inquisitor and Elliot Levey as Cauchon in a production designed by Robert Jones.

Shaw's play, written in 1923, not long after Joan was canonised in 1920, uses material gleaned from historical sources close to the events of Joan's life and trials to present a strong-willed and forceful woman undone by the political realities of her time - a picture also of his general vision of the individual struggling to assert the best of humanity against often overwhelming odds.

Medea

by Euripides in a new version by Rachel Cusk

seen at the Almeida Theatre on 19 October 2015

This is the third and final production in the Almeida GreeK season (following 'Oresteia' reviewed in June 2015 and 'Bakkhai' reviewed in August 2015). It is directed by Rupert Goold and designed by Ian MacNeil, and features Kate Fleetwood as Medea, Justin Salinger as Jason, Amanda Boxer as the Nurse, Michele Austin as the Cleaner, Andy de la Tour as Creon and a Tutor, and Richard Cant as Aegeus, with a chorus of five women, and two young boys, the sons of Medea and Jason.

The play is set in an opulent house - we see two levels but there are also stairs going down out of sight - in which Medea, a freelance writer, is living with her sons not long after (it seems) Jason has left her for a younger woman. The house and its contents, of course, become part of the battleground of the now alienated couple; 'equal shares' are a pious fraud in such a situation.