British Vogue - 11.2019

IN ON

THE

ACTS

As playwrights spotlight

history in search of

universal truths, this

autumn is one for the ages,

says Timothy Harrison

I

n times as fraught with

uncertainty as these,

how should a play-

wright make sense of

the world? For the authors

of three of this season’s

most hotly tipped shows, the answer lies back a hundred years

or more. Take Nigeria-born, UK-based Inua Ellams, the writer

behind 2017’s hit Barber Shop Chronicles, who returns to the

National Theatre from 2 December with an update on Chekhov’s

Three Sisters. Ellams trades 1850s Russia, and Olga, Masha and

Irina, for Lolo, Nne Chukwu and Udo – grieving the death of

their father amid the chaos of civil war in 1960s Nigeria. “Brexit

and the rise of nativism – the way it shook Britain – means we’re

now aware of the dangers of looking at imperialism through

rose-tinted glasses,” says Ellams of the play.

Meanwhile, Indian writer Anupama Chandrasekhar – a name

to watch following her appointment as the National Theatre’s

first international writer-in-residence – picks up themes from

Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts in When the Crows Visit, at the Kiln Theatre

from 23 October to 30 November. A contemporary Indian mother

is beset by accusations that her son committed a violent crime in

this scathing look at patriarchy. “I ask the same questions Ibsen

did,” says Chandrasekhar. “What is at the heart of my society’s

disease and decay? And

what can stem this rot?”

Yet another historical

inspiration offers some

ideas. Fresh off her Olivier

Award win for Home, I’m

Darling, Brit Laura Wade

has tuned up Jane Austen’s

unfinished novel The

Watsons for a run at the Menier Chocolate Factory in SE1

(it ends on 16 November). The story begins with 19-year-old

Emma, newly cut off from family money and facing unhappy-

marriage prospects in Tom Musgrave and Lord Osborne, but

ends as abruptly as Austen’s abandoned work. “When I found

out she’d left this book unfinished, I wanted to look under the

bonnet and ask why she stopped,” says Wade. Bonnets aside,

this reworked Regency piece feels modern, depicting, as it

does, women striving for control of their fate. n

FAIRVIEW

Fairview ambushed New York audiences with

its unflinching exploration of race, privilege and

representation, and it’s set to do the same in

London. The Pulitzer Prize-winning play makes

its debut at the Young Vic from 28 November.

OUR LADY OF KIBEHO

Twenty-five years after the Rwandan genocide,

Katori Hall presents the haunting story of a

Rwandan schoolgirl whose vision of impending

horror in her homeland is ignored. Now showing

at Stratford East, following a run Off-Broadway.

DEAR EVAN HANSEN

The Broadway sensation about an isolated

high-schooler caught up in the aftermath of

a classmate’s suicide makes its long-anticipated

move to London’s Noël Coward Theatre from

29 October. No one leaves with dry eyes.

THE

BROADWAY

TRANSFERS

SIMON ANNAND; MANUEL HARLAN; TFANA BROADWAY SHOW/HENRY GROSSMAN

A R TS & C U LT U R E

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