Right-on Emma or Right-wing Fay? Up to you...
ROBERT GORE-LANGTON Orlando
Garrick Theatre, London Until February 25, 1hr 30mins
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Kerry Jackson Dorfman Theatre, London
Until January 28, 2hrs 30mins
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Emma Corrin is all the rage: Diana in The Crown, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and now this literary West End project in which Orlando time-travels through the centuries, never ageing. Think Doctor Who meets Peter Pan.
Based on the book by Virginia Woolf, Orlando shimmies through 300 years of English history and has a change of sex along the way. Neil Bartlett’s version provides the perfect role for the ‘non-binary’ young Corrin whose preferred pronoun is ‘they’.
The show is achingly right-on but it’s also very short and it’s not dull.
Woolf fans will be delighted to find nine actors playing her on stage at the same time, all in identical cardigans. Thank God, though, for the cockney wardrobe mistress Mrs Grimsditch (Deborah Findlay, a sarky treat) whose asides prevent the show disappearing up itself.
Characters include a grumpy Elizabeth I (Lucy Briers) and the exotic Sasha (Millicent Wong) who causes Orlando real heartbreak. Upshot? A larky, optimistic evening fully exploiting Corrin’s magnetism but one that’s Rizla-thin.
Kerry Jackson stars Cold Feet’s Fay Ripley on hilarious form in a potty-mouthed new comedy that sends up the gentrification of London’s suburbs. It fills this studio theatre with laughter: a sound, panto excluded, that’s in ever dwindling supply in British theatre.
Kerry, who voted leave, has ‘Dave’ tattooed on her bum and once ran a marathon dressed as a bottle of rioja, comes from Chelmsford. She speaks her mind (a lot) and runs a struggling Spanishthemed restaurant in smug ‘Walthamstow Village’. In walks a recently widowed, dithering Leftie middle-class lecturer, Stephen, father to a grieving, woke student Alice (Kitty Hawthorne in a terrific stage debut).
April De Angelis’s play pits Kerry’s innate Right-wingery against Stephen’s do-goodery (Michael Gould, every inch the dripping liberal). The dialogue is cracking and generously larded with one-liners as it plays out its ancient theme of class conflict.
It relies a lot on Ripley’s ace performance as Kerry, who meets her match in her chef (Madeline Appiah, who’s also excellent).
There’s disco dancing and a rotating set that recreates the tapas joint and Stephen’s tasteful home. The funniest new play in ages.