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High anxiety: Collapse - Riverside Studios

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It’s a brave or maybe slightly provocative production to use Hammersmith Bridge on their artwork for a show called Collapse, which is about how everything collapses—poorly maintained bridges, relationships, and jobs. Nothing works. That’s probably too close to home for Hammersmith residents stuck with a magnificently listed and useless bridge on their front door. It gets even weirder when you realise the piece is staged in what looks like a meeting room with a bar. However, keeping things together in the most unlikely of circumstances is at the heart of Allison Moore's witty and engaging four-hander, which is currently having a limited engagement at Riverside Studios . The piece opens with Hannah (Emma Haines) about to get an injection from her husband (Keenan Heinzelmann). They’re struggling for a baby, and he’s struggling to get out of bed. But he managed to give her a shot of hormones before she started worrying about the rest of the day. She’s unsure she will keep her job with ...

Mind the gap: One Under @arcolatheatre

Winsome Pinnock’s play, One Under revisits the aftermath of a young black man’s suicide on the London Underground. The pieces of his life are recreated in search of meaning. It’s a fascinating (albeit slowly paced) tale about a life not lived. Produced by Graeae, which specialises in placing deaf and disabled artists on stage alongside Theatre Royal Plymouth, it’s been on tour before settling in for a short run at the Arcola Theatre.

He’s Sonny by name and by nature. But something isn’t quite right. He thinks people follow him and watch him. He has lots of money too. Is he paranoid, or are there darker forces at play?

After his death, the tube driver of the train that killed him, Cyrus (Stanley J Browne), goes on a mission to find sense out the senseless loss of life. Befriending his adopted mother and tracking down he is girlfriend at a laundrette, his determination to make sense of it all starts to become an obsession itself.

The play underscores that despite appearances, you never can really be sure about what is going on in people’s minds. And there are some insightful observations about the pressures on young black men in London.

It also has a simple yet effective set design that doubles as modern home furniture or platforms underground with announcement boards (that also serve as screens captioning the dialogue).

But the leisurely and fragmented nature of the intertwining stories can be a little frustrating at times. Directed by Amit Sharma, One Under is at the Arcola Theatre until 21 December.

⭐️⭐️⭐️



Photos by Patrick Baldwin

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