AUDITORIUM

✮✮ Steven Dietz's Last of the Boys Southwark Playhouse | London directed by John Haidar Steven Dietz’s play Last of the Boys explores the effects of the Vietnam War thirty years later on two American veterans, friends Ben and Jeeter – and Jeeter’s brand new girlfriend – and her mother. If that sounds like a bit of a random selection of people, well… it is. The initial dialogue between brooding Ben and upbeat Jeeter is very promising. It is warm, funny and authentic, with an i

✮✮✮✮ Joshua Harmon's Bad Jews Seymour Centre | Sydney directed by Gary Abrahams Joshua Harmon’s Bad Jews explores authenticity of the self in relation to religion, ethnicity and history. At opposite ends of a spectrum are the religiously observant Daphna and her atheist cousin Liam, both Jewish by genealogy but each relating to their backgrounds in vastly different ways. They fight over what constitutes right and wrong, constantly and fervently berating each other for their c

✮✮✮ David Greig's The Events Belvoir St Theatre | Sydney directed by Clare Watson There are probably no issues more pressing than those pertaining to immigration, terrorism and mass shootings. Trying to make sense of these realities has become an everyday fixation in many of our lives, and David Greig’s The Events is a timely and sensitive expression of those concerns. Claire is a priest and choir leader whose life and faith is shattered by a traumatic incident that transform

✮✮✮✮ Nick Payne's Elegy Donmar Warehouse | London directed by Josie Rourke What is a life? Is it enough just to be alive and well, or do we need something else to make our lives more than just existence? These are some of the questions raised in Nick Payne’s latest play, Elegy. Lorna (Zoë Wanamaker) has a neurodegenerative disease which will kill her, unless she has the affected part of her brain removed – and with it every memory of her wife, Carrie (Barbara Flynn). ​ The pl