The Week on Stage: From Jitney to King Lear

Let’s spare a thought for the actors this week, shall we? Some of them are having to endure a heatwave while wearing CORDUROY, under sweltering stage lights. Get them all an Aperol spritzer and a hand fan.

This week, it’s been all about modern spins on the canon. Kathryn Hunter takes up the role of King Lear at Shakespeare’s Globe, A Doll’s House gets a sequel at Donmar Warehouse, and director-to-watch Tinuke Craig brings her revival of August Wilson’s Jitney to the Old Vic.

Join us next week when we’ll be checking out the Royal Court’s mysteriously authored That Is Not Who I Am, and LIFT Festival highlight Sun & Sea.

Jitney – Old Vic ★★★★☆

August Wilson’s Jitney takes us back to the Seventies. We’re in a taxi rank in Pittsburgh. Everything has an orange glow, from the garish wallpaper to the glowing electric heater. It’s a place where the revolving cast of Black drivers are invisible, but they still take pride in how they look. For the young men, big flares and impressive facial hair are the order in the day. For their elders, it’s crisps suits and smart hats.

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Under Tinuke Craig’s direction, the stage is always bustling. The door constantly bangs, with men entering, answering the phone with the words “car service”, nodding, then heading back out again. Amid the flurry, your eyes are drawn to station manager Becker (Wil Johnson). He’s a man trying to command respect from his team in the face of exhausting discrimination from the city.

Praise should also be heaped on Leanne Henlon as the long-suffering girlfriend, a standout in a sea of testosterone. Male bravado is the downfall of these men, Craig’s production playing with ideas of masculinity without ever feeling preachy. Jitney allows you to laugh at their ridiculousness. Amid the anger, there’s joy too. Isobel Lewis

A Doll’s House, Part 2 – Donmar Warehouse ★★★☆☆

“Marriage is cruel and destroys people’s lives.” I mean… it’s a take. In Lucas Hnath’s sequel to Ibsen’s 1879 proto-feminist drama, we find out what Nora Helmer did next – and it seems she’s become some kind of anti-marriage influencer. After leaving her husband and abandoning her children, she got herself a book deal. Well, they do say everything is copy.

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Is this meta-fiction? Or Ibsen fan fic? Either way, it’s a pretty niche kink for a hot summer’s night. It’s clear early on that this will be a schematic evening when Nora goes on a spiel about marriage. Some of Hnath’s questions are compelling and unexpected – who has access to the search for selfhood? – but others feel contrived. More compelling is Hnath’s skill at making us switch sympathies. “You’ve made a lot of assumptions,” says Nora’s daughter Emmy. It feels like an indictment of our current bad faith discourse.

Noma Dumezweni’s straight-backed Nora is always arranging her posture, occasionally clenching a fist behind her back, while Brian F O’Byrne’s Torvald often cannot physically face her. As their daughter Emmy, Patricia Allison is all weaponised cheerfulness, while June Watson’s Anne Marie eventually gets fed up and just starts swearing. “F*** you, Nora,” she spits. The return of that legendary door slam at the end is a startling full stop. Feminism in action, or the punctuation of the patriarchy? Jessie Thompson

Read the full review here.

King Lear – Shakespeare’s Globe ★★★★★

“When the mind’s free/The body’s delicate: the tempest is my mind/Doth from my senses take all feeling else/Save what beats there/Filial ingratitude.” When Kathryn Hunter’s Lear speaks these lines, the words have a special edge, force and poignancy. She gives a superb performance in Helena Kaut-Howson’s production on the main stage at Shakespeare’s Globe.

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Her Lear is pushed on in a wheelchair. The character waves a crutch at the heavens. She may be wearing a gangster-like slick black suit, but this actress has always excelled at conveying a racing mind via a vulnerable, damaged body, espousing a mass of contradictions through the discord between raging fury and injured inwardness. This is a great Lear in a staging which is wonderfully receptive to her gifts. Paul Taylor