British Vogue - 11.2019

(Nancy Kaufman) #1
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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