An Octoroon
Dorfman Stage, National Theatre, London Until Jul 18, 2hrs 40 mins
At one point in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s groundbreaking play, a white actor, who has plastered his face with red make-up to portray a Native American, dances wildly to black rap music.
The moment is typical of this fascinating and occasionally surreal mash-up of Dion Boucicault’s 1859 play The Octoroon and modern notions of racial stereotypes and identity.
Ken Nwosu (above) is excellent in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s fascinating & occasionally surreal mash-up of Dion Boucicault’s 1859 play and modern notions of racial stereotypes and identity
The Irish storyteller’s melodrama, set on a plantation in Louisiana, turns on the plight of its slaves, in particular the Octoroon of the title (a person with one-eighth black blood), and a well-meaning white heir (a white-faced Ken Nwosu, excellent) who must choose between forbidden love and saving the estate.
Though Boucicault’s play is anti-slavery, Jacobs-Jenkins employs modern, expletive-strewn language (‘That’s so messed-up,’ observes one slave of their situation), in-jokes and asides to the audience to pick apart the legacy of slavery.
Though Boucicault’s play is anti-slavery, Jacobs-Jenkins employs modern, expletive-strewn language. Above left, Alistair Toovey and, right, Cassie Clare
Ned Bennett’s striking production, first seen at Richmond’s Orange Tree theatre, is unsettling too: a tap-dancing, frock-coated Br’er Rabbit spookily pops up in sudden flashes as if in a horror film – far from the cute Disney image of the Uncle Remus character.
Jacobs-Jenkins is already one of America’s hottest young playwrights, and this inventive piece confirms him as one to watch.
Sea Wall
The Old Vic Until Sat, 35 mins
Rating: 
Less is more, it has been said, and that’s certainly true of this 35-minute monologue performed by Andrew Scott of Sherlock fame.
It’s rather shorter than his award-wining four-hour Hamlet, but Scott manages to cram more into this than some actors do in a lifetime.
In Simon Stephens’s piece (written for Scott), he is photographer Alex, an affable chap in baggy, faded jeans and old Lacoste polo who talks about his nice life – his eccentric father-in-law, loving wife and adorable daughter.
Less is more, it has been said, and that’s certainly true of this monologue performed by Andrew Scott who manages to cram more into 35 minutes than some actors do in a lifetime
It’s almost as if Scott is doing stand-up, deftly engaging his rapt audience with wry comic observations. This is indeed a shaggy-dog story, but one with a devastating punchline.
Scott’s performance is full of nuance, making use of all the half-finished sentences and telling details of the text, and the ordinary depiction of the tragedy emphasises the chasm of grief that poleaxes Alex.
Riveting.
84 Charing Cross Road
Cambridge Arts Theatre Until Sat, 2 hrs
Rating:
Stefanie Powers – from the television series Hart To Hart, where she played opposite Robert Wagner – is on tour in this charming, leather-scented 1981 drama about the affectionate 20-year correspondence (from 1949 to 1968) between a sober London bookseller and a forthright American customer.
Powers plays Helene Hanff – who wrote the book, here adapted for the stage by James Roose-Evans.
She is a hard-smoking hack screenwriter with a passion for highbrow literature.
Stefanie Powers plays Helene (above) in this charming 1981 drama about the affectionate 20-year correspondence between a London bookseller and an American customer
Clive Francis is perfect as Frank Doel, the tweedy, obliging London bookseller who smirks with delight at her acerbic letters that she reads aloud from her tiny apartment perched on one side of the stage.
Books are despatched and she is soon generously reciprocating with tinned tongue and nylons.
The play is really an American love letter to Britain and English literature. Staged on a set of bookshop shelves, it is funny, old-fashioned and surprisingly poignant.
Stefanie Powers is just the ticket as the big-hearted old New York broad. Nostalgics for musty old books and a long-vanished London will revel in it.
Robert Gore-Langton
Monogamy
Park Theatre, London Until Jul 7, 2hrs 10 mins
Rating: 
In this play Janie Dee is Caroline – acidly referred to as Britain’s ‘second favourite kitchen goddess’ – a Christian cook whose home is also her TV studio.
But her show is under threat: she has been snapped by the press, dead drunk, falling out of a cab.
Meanwhile, her sarky student son Leo (Jack Archer) is home and struggling to announce he is gay to his reactionary banker father, and Caroline’s affair with her carpenter is about to boil over (EastEnders’ Charlie Brooks plays the chippie’s unhinged wife with a knife).
In this play Janie Dee is Caroline (above) – acidly referred to as Britain’s ‘second favourite kitchen goddess’ – a Christian cook whose home is also her TV studio
Torben Betts’s family meltdown farce is undermined by also being a covert lecture on why marriage belongs in the compost bin, and Dee never totally convinced me she was a God-fearing cook. Also, the son with a gay secret is a clapped-out plot device.
The most consistent laughs come from Genevieve Gaunt as Caroline’s drugged-up language-mangling PA, and from Patrick Ryecart, a treat as the purple-faced dad whose ‘homosexual Bolshevik vegetarian’ son is the last straw.
Funny in parts, but the recipe doesn’t work.
Robert Gore-Langton