By Natalie Bennett

When Aleksandr Nikolaevich Ostrovsky’s A Family Affair was sent to the censor in Moscow in 1849 it was immediately banned as “an insult to the Russian merchant class”. But is it insulting satire, or is it insulting farce?

That’s something Serdar Bilis’s new production at the Arcola can’t quite decide. At its best, this production is glorious, astonishingly modern-sounding, laugh-until-you-cry farce. That stream emerges best in the fast-moving second half of this production, in which the author engages in some early play with the interaction between story, stage and actor.

In the first half, however, you are reminded that this was Ostrovsky’s first play, and as a young writer he felt the need to make his points again, and again, and then again. The satire — which probably was fresh then — drags rather now. Sometimes the cast seem to be trying to produce greatly flawed human characters of tragedy, rather than finding the laughs that are undoubtedly here.
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By Robert Bain

We don’t get to learn much about the taxi driver we accompany throughout Hellcab, but we all know exactly how he feels. It’s a familiar character in a familiar set-up: the cold, tired worker slogging through his last shift on Christmas Eve, before clocking off for the festive break.

Dressed in an unbuttoned plaid shirt over a T-shirt, our driver is every bit the standard straightforward good guy, not too warm on the outside, but with a heart underneath it all. He’s such an everyman, in fact, that we don’t even get to know his name.

The play, which opened last week at The Old Red Lion in Islington, is a series of short snippets in which our likeable driver takes a selection of the weird and wonderful people of Chicago to their destinations. We hear a whole string of conversations kick off with the same banal comments about the weather and the basketball game, then head off in bizarre, funny and disturbing directions.
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By Rebecca Law

For those looking for a night of entertaining musical entertainment, look no further. Consisting of only two lines of the spoken word and driven otherwise entirely by song, I Sing! does exactly what it says on the tin. For those with children however, beware – Mary Poppins, this isn’t. I Sing! would do well to come with a warning on the packet: this play contains uncomfortable moments of a kapel-clad Hebrew class teacher shamelessly dry-humping parts of the set whilst singing “Fuck me, Heidi, Fuck me” in a fit of unrequited frustration.

Discomfort aside, this is certainly a very entertaining and touching production, which follows the lives of five 20-something New Yorkers as they grapple with the uncertainty of their futures, precariously negotiating the transitory nature of love and life. I Sing! features five articulate, educated young adults whose lives intertwine in a naturally incestuous way, proving, as they say, that even somewhere like New York can be “the biggest little town”.

Before arriving in London, I Sing! had previously played in New York, Chicago and Australia, and now finds itself in the suitably intimate surroundings of the Union Theatre in Southwark, which boasts just four rows of seats. This allows the audience up close and very personal with the action, both the poignant — as cast members blow wispy tendrils of cigarette smoke into their faces — and the downright brazen, as the characters happily prance around the stage in their underwear.
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