We Had A World by Joshua Harmon, Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, 13 June 2026

Excellent play and production, not very accurately described in the blurb!

Janie and I were both really taken with this play/production. In some ways, not really our type of play. Indeed, had the Hampstead blurb for this production described the play more accurately, we might have chosen not to go, on the basis…

haven’t we seen enough of these Jewish families with grudges plays?…can get all that at home…not another narrator looking back at his family upbringing play…

…which would have been a terrible shame, because this one really is excellent, both as a play and a production. Well drawn characters – you end up caring about all of them – even the old dragon of an alcoholic, mischief-making grandmother.

Suzanne Bertish, Anna Francolini and Ryan Kopel all put in superb performances, ably directed by Josh Seymour.

The house was not full on the Saturday evening we attended. Perhaps the blurb, which made us imagine that the play was about modern art, attracted a smaller audience than a more accurate blurb might have done.

Who knows? In any case, it still has a couple of weeks to run at the time of writing and we would recommend this highly if there are still some tickets available when you read this.

I haven’t yet studied the formal reviews – click here for them – but sense that they, like us, were impressed.

Briefing by Doris Lessing, Camden People’s Theatre, 11 April 2008

Trying to work out how we ended up in a small theatre watching this production, I spotted the director’s name, Avye Leventis, which made me realise that this event occurred because one of Janie’s client’s daughters was making her directorial debut.

The Camden New Journal wrote highly of the play/production – click here.

The piece is an adaptation of Doris Lessing’s novel “Briefing for a Descent into Hell”. It wasn’t that bad, but we were neither comfy nor inspired by the work.

As Janie said when I raised the matter with her just now (2016), “we’re too old and ugly now to allow ourselves to be bullied into seeing stuff in such circumstances any more”.

Ouch.

By all accounts, Avye’s career has progressed from here. Which is good.