After August: Creditors by August Strindberg, Adapted by Howard Brenton, Orange Tree Theatre, 6 September 2025

Oh boy was I excited ahead of this one. Janie and I don’t usually go to see plays when we have seen an excellent production before. But we are huge fans of Strindberg and this just seemed too good to miss.

Tom Littler, Director, pairing up again with Howard Brenton adapting a Strindberg play. We loved their version of The Dances of Death at The Gate

Could that team possibly wow us again, this time with Creditors, a play which we had seen in an excellent production at The Donmar “back in the day”?

Yes they could.

Despite the risk of over-expectation, Janie and I were wowed by this production of Creditors at the Orange Tree, which we saw on the day of the first preview.

Charles Dance, Nicholas Farrell and Geraldine James are such fine actors and professional folk all, we should not be surprised that their performances seemed as polished as one might expect deep into a run. Only the curtain call (if you can call it a curtain call in a curtain-free, in-the-round place like The Orange Tree) showed signs of under-preparation. At a first preview, that surely can be forgiven, or even awarded laughter and additional applause, which it was.

The evening started slightly oddly. We arrived at The Orange Tree early enough for a pre-show drink. The gentleman serving behind the bar, whom I did not recognise, looked up at us and said:

I’ve just been reading your blog.

When Janie expressed surprise, both at the fact that the gentleman recognised me and that he had been reading my blog, the gentleman said:

He’s got a very recognisable face. And there aren’t many people who blog about both The Orange Tree Theatre and Lord’s cricket.

We then all three had a brief chat about Middlesex cricket before parting company, in our case with our drinks.

I’d be less recognisable if someone stopped taking all those double-selfies

Returning to The Orange Tree’s production of Creditors, there is clearly something that really works when Howard Brenton adapts Strindberg plays and Tom Littler then directs them. Those two seem to “get” Strindberg, creating an atmosphere, setting the scenarios and pacing the text masterfully. In the hands of a fine acting trio such as Dance, Farrell and James, it is a gob-smackingly good 90 minutes or so of theatre.

Such a shame (for those without tickets) that the run has sold out, but there will be a filmed version of this production available for streaming in October and perhaps this production will get a transfer. This really is one of those productions that theatre lovers should have a chance to see. Janie and I feel hugely privileged to have got to see this production on its very first airing.

Formal reviews should start appearing soon if they have not already started appearing by the time you read this – click here for a good search term that should capture most perhaps even all.

We love The Orange Tree Theatre. Have I mentioned that before? (Yes).

Here In America by David Edgar, Orange Tree Theatre, 14 September 2024

Imagine politics in the USA embroiled in weird paranoia, obsessing about enemies within, making counterfactual accusations directed primarily towards people from migrant communities, with freedoms consequently being eroded by egotistical politicians.

But this isn’t a play about the Trumpian era; the play is about the Second Red Scare in the 1950s and the impact it had on the friendship between playwright Arthur Miller and director Elia Kazan.

I have been a fan of David Edgar’s plays since the mid 1980s, when I got busy reading every play I could get my hands on. In those days I was able to get my hands on a lot of David Edgar’s plays.

In the 80s and 90s I got to see several David Edgar plays performed, but he is not so prolific these days and not often revived in places that Janie and I tend to visit.

Still, like London buses, after a dearth of Edgars for several years, two new ones have come along at the same time: this one and The New Real, which we have booked to see in Stratford-Upon-Avon next month.

This one, Here In America, is just our sort of play – and this production at The Orange Tree is just our sort of production – we loved it.

I have long been fascinated by the phenomenon that became known as McCarthyism and in particular the impact it had on the performing arts. In 1952 Elia Kazan eventually agreed to name names rather than jeopardise his career, whereas Arthur Miller risked jail by refusing to name names when he was summoned to the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1954, around the time that Kazan was enhancing his career with films such as On The Waterfront:

In David Edgar’s hands, this story fizzes with political and interpersonal energy. The play is mostly dialogue between Kazan and Miller, with Kazan’s wife, Molly Day in a great many of the scenes. Several scenes also include Marilyn Monroe, who appears in Milleresque fashion, perhaps as flashbacks, perhaps as unreliable memories or perhaps as imaginings. Very reminiscent of such scenes in Miller plays, e.g. Death Of A Salesman. Very well done.

All the actors played their parts well: Michael Aloni (who struck us as very Arthur Miller-like), Jasmine Blackborow, Faye Castelow and Shaun Evans. Director James Dacre is also to be congratulated for making this multi-faceted play work extremely well within the limits of The Orange Tree’s small in-the-round space.

Janie and I left The Orange Tree with lots to discuss; many big-picture political matters, questions around loyalty to friends and also loyalty to loved ones. Both Kazan and Miller betrayed their wives with Marilyn Monroe and later, arguably, jointly betrayed Monroe’s memory through their work.

But before we left the auditorium, or rather as we were leaving, I was able to congratulate David Edgar in person. We were there on the first preview night for this show so it was hardly a surprise to spot him there. I asked him if Here In America and the forthcoming play The New Real are companion pieces.

Didn’t really think about it that way…but there are two lines that appear in both plays,

he said. I promised to form my own opinion on that question. I’m glad I had the opportunity to speak with David Edgar, albeit very briefly, having followed his work for so many decades.

The evening even generated a memory flash from 50 years ago, which I have written up in a separate Ogblog piece:

It was a very memorable preview night in the theatre. I’ll add a review link once the play has been formally reviewed. It is running at The Orange Tree until 19 October. Highly recommended by both me and Janie.

Howzat? Missing – Going Way Down The Off-Side: TESTMATCH by Kate Attwell, Orange Tree Theatre, 4 May 2024

It looked like such a good idea in the flyer months ago…

We love The Orange Tree Theatre and try to support as much as we can, especially when it gets around to promoting new writing on topics that interest us.

We love cricket. That includes women’s cricket. We were there at Lord’s when England Women played India Women in the World Cup Final in 2017:

TESTMATCH by Kate Attwell is described in all its detail on The Orange Tree website – click here. For those who don’t like to click, here’s the central synopsis that hooked me and Janie for two [did you see what I did there?]:

Lord’s, present day. It’s the Women’s Cricket World Cup: England versus India. There’s a rain delay. Tensions mount, ambitions are laid bare and a whole new tactical game begins. Calcutta in the eighteenth century. Two British administrators in colonial India encounter challenges on the field of play that threaten the entire regime.  

In this game of integrity and power, past and present collide. Kate Attwell’s funny and provocative play explores and explodes the mythology of fair play. 

Extracted from The Orange Tree blurb for TESTMATCH

You’ll also spot some good-looking summary reviews if you click that link, so might conclude that Janie and I are in a minority when we report that we both found this play and production a dud.

Heaven knows, I might sometimes look like a caricature of an MCC member trying to look young and hip at Lord’s…

What do you mean, TRYING to look hip?

…but I’ll have you know that Janie and I were watching women’s cricket and I was campaigning for women to be allowed into The Bowlers’ Bar at Lord’s before several of the current England and Middlesex players who play at Lord’s were even born.

The problems we had with TESTMATCH were many and varied. We thought the script repetitive, the jokes mostly unfunny and the important points, of which there were many, delivered without subtlety and often with counter-effective impact if impact at all.

In truth, the whole piece felt like an excuse to discuss a whole heap of very real issues around race, gender, commercial power and fair play, delivered like me trying to hit the cover off a cricket ball with a long-handled bat – i.e. terrible mishits such that they either missed the metaphorical ball completely or hit that metaphor up in the air for a dolly catch.

We are used to suspending belief for theatre, but the notion that such conversations and action could possibly take place in The Lord’s Pavilion during a rain interval in a major women’s international match shows ignorance of how professional the women’s game has become in the 20+ years since Janie and I started following international women’s cricket.

And don’t get me started on the notion that women cricketers might have been advocating roundarm and/or overarm bowling at the time of the Great Bengal famine.

It was hard to tell whether the cast was limited by ability, the script or some eccentric directing, but the style of delivery came across to us as more like “try hard am-dram” than professional performance.

But heck, if you are considering seeing this play, you should read the theatre reviews, which I hadn’t read before writing the above. On the whole, they support our criticisms, but come down far more favourably on this production than we did. Click here for links to reviews.

For me, the highlight of the evening was getting to bowl at one of the performers a couple of times at the end of the interval. Had I realised it was supposed to be 1770, I’d have bowled underarm. And had I realised that my 20-30 mph dobblers would seem fast in the restricted space of The Orange Tree, I’d have tried to bowl even slower than usual.

Is it possible to bowl slower than this?

A member of the audience even praised my bowling as we left. A gentleman who is easily pleased, he might well have also enjoyed the play.

You Bury Me by AHLAM, Orange Tree Theatre, 8 April 2023

Tahrir Square, 2011 (Mona sosh), CC BY 2.0

This was a fabulous play/production at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond.

It’s about revolting young people in Cairo – i.e. the story, over several years, of several engaging, well-crafted characters, initially caught up in the revolution which started in 2011.

This Orange Tree link shows you all you might want to know about the play/production.

No programme for this production, but there is a care pack – click here – this must be the modern way.

The playwright AHLAM is anonymous/pseudonymous, perhaps a proxy for the “always in danger blogger” character Osman, played very well by Tarrick Benham.

The play covers well the politics of those years – from hope through frustration to fear and desperation. In particular the revolutionary blogger character Osman and his gay friend Rafik, played well by Nezar Alderazi, illustrate the big picture.

But it is also a tale of interpersonal relationships. The younger characters, girls at the outset, Lina (played by Eleanor Nawal) and Maya (played by Yasemin Özdemir) getting in and out of trouble with boys and with each-other.

The whole production was very well acted and very well produced. The night we went, Hanna Khogali was indisposed, so assistant director Riwa Saab stood in for her at the last minute. Riwa is clearly a very talented young thing but not a actress – nevertheless she is a performer when not directing and carried the part astonishingly well in the circumstances, as did all the others, in particular Moe Bar-El whose character had to interact with Riwa’s character the most. Theirs was a “star-crossed lovers” story; him from a Coptic family and her from a Muslim family of cops.

It sounds a bit cheesy when described in simple sentences about the plot, but the stories dance between each other and across time to make a wonderfully engaging evening of theatre.

100 minutes without an interval, but at no point did it feel like a drag.

Mostly excellent reviews – see the headlines on The Orange Tree link or click here for links to the raw review material.

Funnily enough, Janie and I did find ourselves in Cairo, in 2012, when one of the secondary bouts of revolution kicked off. We could smell the tear gas when we visited the National Museum on the edge of Tahrir Square.

Janie and I have not been to the theatre much these past few months. We’ll be going a fair bit over the next few months. This one certainly started our “new season” of theatre going with a bang…and I don’t mean tear gas canisters going off in Tahrir Square.

Rice by Michele Lee, Orange Tree Theatre, 30 October 2021

Philip Halling / The Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond

Rice at The Orange Tree Theatre was our first visit to the theatre to see a drama for more than 18 months. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then.

The last thing we saw, just before the first lockdown, was Not Quite Jerusalem at the Finborough:

The Orange Tree assured us in its marketing that the theatre is “See It Safely” approved, which no doubt it was. The problem with that level of biosecurity in a small theatre like The Orange Tree is that the safety removes much of the warmth, atmosphere and absence of fourth wall that theatre in the round is meant to provide.

It didn’t help that the weather has turned a bit colder on us – well it is autumn – to the extent that even extra layers of clothing and cushions neither made us feel warm nor comfortable while sitting for 90 minutes plus.

The play was not designed to make us feel comfortable of course – it grapples with relationships, inter-generational conflict, cultural conflicts and international commerce – in the hands of two performers, primarily as a two-hander play but each performer also covers several additional, smaller roles.

As we would expect at The Orange Tree, one of our favourite places, the quality of the acting, directing and production was very high. We have been impressed by Matthew Xia’s work as a director before, both at the Orange Tree and elsewhere.

But this complex piece/production did not really warm the cockles of our hearts, to encourage us to rush back to fringe theatre the way we visited regularly and avidly prior to the pandemic. We’ve booked one or two things for this autumn/winter – we might book one or two more .

We’ll keep our (many) memberships going of course – we are still great supporters but we’re just not in a rush to attend very often – not yet anyway.

Mixed reviews but mostly good ones – accessible through this link.

The Mikvah Project by Josh Azouz, Orange Tree Theatre, 29 February 2020

A mikvah (or mikveh) is a Jewish ritual bath (the picture above is a modern example).

It is rather an orthodox thing and mostly a female thing, so, in truth, I’ve not had much truck with mikv’ot (mikvah, plural) personally. I do remember my father saying that he wanted to apply for the job of lifeguard when they opened a mikvah in Streatham, but he was joking and I am digressing.

The closest I’ve got to actually dipping in a mikvah-like manner personally was my visit to the Fukinomori onsen bath in Japan 18 months or so ago:

Now I am digressing even further.

The Mikvah Project is a cute short play which Janie and I enjoyed very much.

Here is a link to The Orange Tree resource on this production.

The Orange Tree team has made an excellent short video explaining the play, embedded below:

It had a short run at the Orange Tree’s Director Festival 2019, which was very well received by the reviewers, but not seen by many people, so the Orange Tree has, wisely, brought the piece back for a full run with a proper set, including a “bad boy of a pseudo-mikvah” on stage.

Janie and I were both really impressed by the writing, the production and the directing. The performances of both Alex Waldmann & Josh Zare were top rate.

At one level it is a slight piece. Just over an hour; a simple and somewhat predictable plot. It made me think of My Beautiful Laundrette, but without the heavy political and inter-racial overtones.

Yet the play works extremely well. It is a charming piece that shows two young men in semi-detached North-West London suburbia who are semi-detached from their roots and from the expectations their community places upon them.

Janie and I like short plays of this kind; entertaining, thought-provoking and well-produced. Another big tick in the box for The Orange Tree.

If you are reading this during March 2020, we recommend that you go and see this piece; it runs at the Orange Tree until 28 March.

Little Baby Jesus by Arinzé Kene, Orange Tree Theatre, 26 October 2019

Janie and I are a somewhat split jury on this one. I really enjoyed the play, finding it entertaining and suitably dramatic. The first half has a much lighter tone than the second. Janie found the first half rather silly and trivial, while she found the second half too long and ponderous.

If the reviews are anything to go by, I called this one “right”, but don’t tell Janie that. Here is a link to the reviews.

Janie and I were able to agree that the three young performers put in excellent performances. In particular Janie was surprised to learn that Khai Shaw has only just graduated from Rose Bruford, as he seemed so confident and assured in his performance. But all three performers – Anyebe Godwin and Rachel Nwokoro included, are relatively new to the stage yet pulled off superb, energetic performances.

I was attracted to book this production because Janie and I had been so taken with playwright Arinzé Kene’s performance piece, Misty,at the Bush last year:

I learn from the programme – which is also a helpful play text with another Kene play, Estate Walls, to read in my spare time – that Little Baby Jesus is actually an early work by Arinzé Kene. The play is being reworked at The Orange Tree some eight years after it was written and performed at the Ovalhouse Theatre. Interesting also that Kene originally worked on the piece with Chè Walker, whose Time Is Love/Tiempo es Amor we very much enjoyed at The Finborough a few months ago:

But returning to Little Baby Jesus, there are signs that it is an early work; I understand Janie’s sense that the first half is somewhat unstructured with the three performers introducing their main characters and also performing a lot of secondary characters to introduce the stories. I found it fun seeing that material unfold but Janie probably wasn’t the only person in the audience who found some of it confusing and the language, at times, hard to penetrate.

The second half has a completely different atmosphere, as the youngsters all, for different but in each case tragic (or potentially tragic) reasons, need to grow up in a hurry.

As is often the case with youthful playwrights (Kene was in his early 20s still when he wrote this piece – what a great sign of burgeoning talent) I could see a little too clearly where some of his ideas came from. Structurally, I was reminded of Faith Healer by Brian Friel. And surely the most shocking scene in the second half, when the youths find an abandoned baby, is partly based on and deliberately reminiscent of Saved by Edward Bond.

But this is the way that fine young writers find their own voice and Arinzé Kene surely has a fascinating voice with colourful stories to tell. I highly commend this production of Little Baby Jesus and I shall surely be looking out for his Kene’s work again.

Here is a link to The Orange Tree resources on Little Baby Jesus.

The Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond - geograph.org.uk - 398198

Amsterdam by Maya Arad Yasur, Orange Tree Theatre, 7 September 2019

Amsterdam - Keizersgracht 387
Amsterdam – Keizersgracht
Click picture for attribution and link

Gosh, this was a truly fascinating short play at the Orange Tree – our first venture to see a play for some while and a great start, from our point of view, to our autumn season at the theatre. We were seeing a preview.

The Orange Tree Theatre’s blurb on this piece can be found by clicking here.

This is not a naturalistic piece. The cast of four narrate the piece, about an unnamed Israeli violinist who is 9 months pregnant living in an apartment in Amsterdam, on the Keizersgracht (one of the canal-side streets).

Are we merely being taken on a voyage through the violinists own febrile, paranoid imaginings or is this a thriller about the uncovering of secrets from Amsterdam’s era of Nazi occupation or are we witnessing a strange brew, mixing those things?

Janie would have preferred some more answers by the end of it, whereas I thought this 80 minute piece was very deliberately leaving a trail of enigmas and unanswerable questions, while at the same time keeping us entertained and weaving sufficient plot lines to tell a story.

All four cast members were excellent; we’d seen Fiston Barek and Hara Yannas recently at the Orange Tree. Daniel Abelson and Michal Horowicz were also strong.

We’d also seen director Matthew Xia’s work at the Orange Tree recently. The style is a bit “workshoppy”, but I think that is the nature of the play and it is hard to imagine how the piece might work in a more stagey syle.

But the greatest plaudits from me go to the writing. I have now read and seen one heck of a lot of plays, so it is rare now to find a writer’s voice so novel and pleasing. For sure I will look out for Maya Arad Yasur’s work again.

Did Janie and I decompress/discuss at length over Spanish food at Don Fernando’s this time? Of course we did.

Did we get home in time to see Bianca Andreescu beat Serena Williams at Flushing? Yes, but only because Bianca kindly lost 4 games in a row (including a championship point) to keep the match alive long enough for us to get home and see the last two games.

Did we play tennis the next morning as usual and then go on to Gunnersbury Museum to see some aspects of BEAT? Yes, yes.

Anyway, returning to the subject of Amsterdam at The Orange Tree; it’s running until 12 October 2019 and we would thoroughly recommend it to anyone who likes imaginative, modern drama.

Reviews for this production, if/when they come, might be found here.

Blood Knot by Athol Fugard, Orange Tree Theatre, 9 March 2019

You wait years for an Athol Fugard to come to London and then, what do you know, two come along at the same time. Like buses, are Athol Fugard plays.

We saw A Lesson From Aloes last week at the Finborough and mighty fine it was too:

Blood Knot at the Orange Tree was also excellent, but if I was only going to see one of these productions, I’d personally choose Aloes, both for the play and for the production.

We saw a preview of Blood Knot, but I think my comments will apply throughout the run.

Blood Knot is a relentlessly grim play. The play is about two half-brothers in Port Elizabeth who are Cape Coloured, to use the hateful vernacular of the South African Apartheid regime. One is light-skinned and could pass for white, while the other is dark-skinned and is more likely to be regarded as black.

The poverty and hopelessness of the brothers’ situation pervades the whole play. The brothers are extremely well portrayed by Nathan McMullen and Kalungi Ssebandeke.

Click here or the picture below for the Orange Tree web resources on this production.

But the play is very slow. Especially the first half. Let’s be honest about this – and I am an Athol Fugard fan saying this – Fugard plays tend to start very slow. Lengthy periods of scene-setting and atmosphere-generating are intrinsic to Fugard’s style.

Blood Knot is especially slow to build. It is an early work and I think Fugard himself would admit that his craft as a playwright improved with experience.

It was a ground-breaking piece in its time; 1961. Fugard himself played Morrie and was testing the boundaries of Apartheid law; loopholes which for a while allowed white and black actors to appear on stage together.

All this and more about the horrible history of racist laws, South African colonialism and the Cape Coloured community are explained in fascinating essays in this production’s programme. I don’t often specifically commend a programme but this one I found hugely informative and interesting.

At the start of the interval, Janie pondered leaving before the second half, but then came round to the idea of seeing the production through.

By the end of the evening, she was really pleased she decided to see the second half – as was I. Still not racey, but the piece makes far more sense as a whole and the second half answers at least some of the questions at a reasonable lick.

Not the very best of Fugard, but still very much worth seeing.

A Bruising Night At the Theatre: Cougar by Rose Lewenstein, Orange Tree Theatre, 2 February 2019

We booked to see the Saturday preview of this one more or less as soon as it was announced – it looked right up our street from the rubric – click here for that rubric.

Sort of chamber play, sort of about big global issues, some top quality, familiar (to us) names in the cast and crew…

…not least Chelsea Walker whose work as a director had impressed us recently with Yous Two at the Hampstead Studio and Low Level Panic at the Orange Tree – click here or below for the former which includes a link to the latter:

One thing I had forgotten about Yous Two was our beef about the set and the resulting sight lines. Strangely, that indifference to audience concerns was replicated in the set of Cougar.

The designer, Rosanna Vize, has designed the sets for a great many plays we have seen recently, as a click through to her Ogblog tab reveals. Her sets are always imaginative and only occasionally impede the audience – in the case of Cougar both physically and visually. The ushers asked us not to walk on the set as we entered the auditorium, but we needed either to walk on the set or stomp on a couple of audience members in one or two places – we went for the set.

Back to the play – here is the trailer:

The play is basically about an increasingly chaotic, globe-trotting relationship between a forty-something woman who is a big cheese, professional environmental expert and her twenty-something lover/paramour. It is a short piece – about 75 minutes long.

An interesting and intriguing play in many ways. The power woman comes across as a rather one-dimensional monster at times, yet her self-centred, ego-fuelled behaviours would seem less monstrous and more nuanced if the gender roles were reversed.

The cross-over between the global issues around climate change and the domestic issues of excessive consumption of resources (real and emotional) pervaded the piece rather well. The short scenes jumping forwards and backwards in time seemed more like a device to maintain the sense of chaos and confusion than an essential structural device for the (straightforwardly linear) story.

If we were being hyper-critical, Janie and I agreed that the female role is perhaps over-written and the male role under-written. Rose Lewenstein more or less owns up to that in the interesting programme interview. Well acted by Charlotte Randle and especially Mike Noble.

Anyway – amongst all this – why have I described the experience as bruising, I hear you cry?

Well, in one chaotic scene, the young man smashes a camera, which I imagine is supposed to break on the stage but not spray everywhere…but spray it did – with the lens (an 18mm-55mm beastie, seeing as you asked)…

Canon EF-S 18-55mm
Muhammad Mahdi Karim [GFDL 1.2 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/fdl-1.2.html)], from Wikimedia Commons

…flying at me, striking me on the shin. Ouch.

A few minutes later, in another chaotic scene, the young man who has a couple of walk-on, walk-off moments (I assume Ryan Laden, who is thanked in the programme) ran off the stage in the dark, crunching into the same leg as he ran. Ouch again.

Janie wondered if I was OK. I felt a bit like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail: “Tis but a scratch”…

…although my equivalent phrase was, “Tis nothing – I play hard ball sports”.

When we got home after the show (and after dinner at Don Fernandos) Janie offered to put some arnica on my bruises.

Oh, that is a big bruise…

…said Janie, admiring a bruise on my left leg.

That’s one I picked up playing real tennis last week. The new bruises are on the right leg,

I said.

I’m sure the cast and crew will work on those production issues between now and press night. It would be well worth going to see this play/production if you read this piece in time – it runs until 2 March 2019. Perhaps best not to book the front row for this one, though, unless you are as brave as The Black Night or a Mountain Lion (Cougar).

Malcolm [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Malcolm [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons