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Ruthless People: Ruthless - Arches Lane Theatre

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What is it about the Madoff’s that writers can’t resist writing about? Sure, it may have been the largest Ponzi scheme to collapse (so far), but there isn’t much more to explore. Or is there? In Ruthless by writer Roger Steinmann, Ruth Madoff is imagined as a wronged, gun-toting woman anchored in the past while trying to move on with her life. It’s not entirely successful but a fascinating look at life and wig choices, It’s currently playing at the theatre now known as the Arches Lane Theatre in Battersea. Ruth Madoff, played by Emily Swain, is here wearing a wig. I thought it was an odd look until I reviewed how closely it matched the photo of her interview in  The New York Times .  Typically, it’s the sort of wig you might see worn by Ladies on a night out in central London, not someone who once had over $80m in assets. With Bernie in Jail and both her sons now dead - one by suicide and one due to cancer, she is setting a table for the men who have left her. And ordering p...

Horse Play: Equus @Trafstudios #EquusWestEnd

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Peter Shaffer's play Equus is given a slick and stylised turn in this English Touring Company production that's currently playing on the West End at Trafalgar Studios . With everything stripped back to the bare essentials, all that's left is a white curtain, muscles and guilt. And the occasion flash or scream. If you missed it earlier this year at Theatre Royal Stratford East, see it now as it's a fresh look at this psychological thriller. The premise of the piece is that seventeen-year-old Alan (played by Ethan Kai with moody intensity), has blinded six horses in a stable he worked in on weekends. Rather than go to jail, he's sent to a psychiatric hospital for treatment.  And where Dysart (Zubin Varla) has to uncover the motive for this madness. Even if it was inspired by a real-life crime, it's rather clever of Schaffer to focus on cruelty to horses in England. Nothing surely can be more shocking in a country that worships the very ground the equine b...

Common divisions: Returning to Haifa @Finborough

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The stage adaption of Ghassan Kanafani’s Returning to Haifa by Ismail Khalidi and Naomi Wallace is fiery and emotional. It’s having its world premiere at the Finborough Theatre . The piece puts you in the living room of a family who had to flee the city of Haifa in 1948, and the family that subsequently occupied it.  The injustice of finding your own home and your belongings legally occupied by someone else is only part of the anger in this piece. It also extends to the staging of it. The programme notes that it was due to have it’s world premiere by the New York Public Theatre. But political pressure from their board led to the proejct being abandoned.  But New York’s loss is London’s gain. Even if you’re unfamiliar with the events you begin to understand it. It humanises enemies and explains motives. And the sensitive portrayals by the ensemble add to emotional impact. The piece crosses three separate time periods. It opens before the dispossession in 1947. Then the period o...