The Week on Stage, from Mad House to Favour

This week, we have a triple bill of brand new plays – some more worthwhile than others.

American playwright Theresa Rebeck’s new play Mad House opened in the West End, with Stranger Things star David Harbour leading the cast. Elsewhere, we checked out Favour at the Bush Theatre, and The Fellowship at Hampstead.

Join us next week for the verdict on The Dance of Death at the Arcola, and Emilia Clarke’s West End debut in The Seagull.

Mad House – Ambassadors Theatre ★★★☆☆

The new comedy from American playwright Theresa Rebeck is calculatedly icky. In Mad House, an old man marinates in his own malevolence as his equally unpleasant adult children squabble over his money. It’s an entertaining but uninspired showcase for the talents of two megawatt US talents: Bill Pullman, who revels in the role of dying patriarch Daniel, and Stranger Things star David Harbour, who plays his put-upon son Michael with the vigour of a wounded bear.

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Director Moritz von Stuelpnagel keeps things pacy, and secures fine, flamboyant performances from this A-grade cast. But still, this is all deeply old-fashioned stuff which, bar an uncomfortable and unnecessary argument about trans people, could have easily been written any time in the last five decades. It’s also unclear what purpose, beyond entertainment, all this nastiness is in service of. We’re told that Michael is in recovery from a breakdown where he believed he was Jesus – playwright Rebeck sought inspiration from David Harbour’s own mental health issues when she wrote the role for him. But there’s a real lack of insight into psychosis, stigma and recovery here. And there’s also a lack of psychological nuance to its unrelentingly bleak depiction of familial cruelties: real-life abusive families often mingle their insults with just enough kindness to keep their ties intact.

Hidden somewhere in the shaky foundations of Mad House is the message that the supposedly mentally ill Michael is the sanest one here. He’s the only one who’s not driven by some kind of ruthless agenda, and the only one who’s trying to do the ‘right thing’. Having a breakdown is, perhaps, the only rational response to being a part of this f***ed up family. Harbour delivers a memorable performance as this tormented everyman, but this play isn’t solidly built enough for it to hit home. Alice Saville

Read the full review

Favour – Bush Theatre ★★★★★

The words “Welcome home!” are emblazoned on a banner on the wall. Teenage Leila (Ashna Rabheru) is kneeling on the floor of her family home, painting a picture, chewing her nails. Her grandmother – or Nanoo – Noor (Renu Brindle) is trying to remain composed. The sign is part-celebration, part-warning.

This is the scene that opens Favour, a revolutionary new play by Diary of a Hounslow Girl writer Ambreen Razia and produced by Clean Break. That banner is for Aleena (Avita Jay), Leila’s mother, a rebellious wild child who’s spent the last two years in prison. Noor is terrified of her neighbours judging her for her daughter’s actions. Fifteen-year-old Leila is about to burst with excitement at seeing her mother again.

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Razia’s script is a lesson in showing rather than telling, at once sharply refined and stuffed to the brim with pop culture references (“Nanoo doesn’t let me watch Love Island. Says it’s just stupid naked people,” Leila complains). There are belly laughs and devastating, earth-shattering lows. It’s galvanising to see the working-class Muslim home she creates on stage, at a time when stories like this are so rarely told.

Our intergenerational trio give incredibly nuanced performances, but it’s Jay’s wide-eyed, immensely expressive Aleena that I was most drawn to. Special credit should also be given to Rina Fatania as Noor’s friend and nosy neighbour, who appears in the show just twice but is a scene-stealer if ever I saw one.

Between Red Pitch, House of Ife and now Favour, the Bush Theatre’s new writing this year has been of a staggeringly high standard. Long may their reign continue. Isobel Lewis

The Fellowship – Hampstead Theatre ★★☆☆☆

Bad luck befell the latest play from Roy Williams a week before it was due to open. The lead actor had to depart the production, leaving Cherrelle Skeete to step up from a supporting role to the top of the cast list. Skeete does her absolute best in steering The Fellowship to safe harbour as Dawn, a role written for an actor 30 years her senior. Yet her committed performance is not enough to salvage the muddled, under-edited material. That, unfortunately, cannot be blamed on unexpected last-minute hitches.

The family melodrama is mostly set in Dawn’s living room, as she balances the issues of caring for her dying mother with the fact her teenage son keeps making questionable life choices. Also raised is the topic of interracial dating. And hate crimes. There’s bereavement. Infidelity. Perjury. The Windrush scandal. And hey – a brief nod to Covid to top it all off. It’s... a lot. Scenes feel oddly paced, with the tone switching from rage-filled to bizarre to straight-up mortifying at a moment’s notice.

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Trevor Laird plays Dawn’s partner, Tony. Though he provides the main comedic relief of the play, the character is so laden with negative stereotypes that his presence ends up feeling borderline offensive. As much as this is a play that aims to present a naturalistic representation of a Black British family, it suffers from taking on far too much, handled with far too little grace to provide a nuanced and worthwhile message. Under the weight of all the concepts it tries to carry, The Fellowship sinks. Nicole Vassell