John
Dorfman, National Theatre, London SE1
★★★★★
A myriad of tiny glass and plastic eyes watch over the American dramatist Annie Baker’s play, set in a cutesy B&B near the Gettysburg battlefield, Pennsylvania. Dolls, gnomes and porcelain angels perch on lintels, shelves and the grandfather clock. A young couple with trust issues (Anneika Rose and Tom Mothersdale) are sweetly cosseted by their host (Marylouise Burke, twinkling unnervingly) and meet her forbidding elderly friend (a magnificent June Watson, with her tales of psychic possession). Baker’s plays take their time — here, an enthralling 200 minutes.
A relationship can splinter in a silence, a feeling bloom and fade. If her story is simple, her mood and ideas are anything but. John is a tantalising (and very funny) drama about, I guess, the soul. Those uncanny inanimate objects often take on a life of their own, as if they know their needs better than the perplexed, unhappy humans around them. The Christmas lights flicker on and off, the piano plays itself (Yes Sir, That’s My Baby). Dolls may be frozen in fury, but what do people want? What are we searching for or haunted by? The Flick, Baker’s previous play, set in a fading urban cinema, hollowed me out; in James Macdonald’s warm and steady production, and Chloe Lamford’s cherishably cluttered design, John is less explicit, but enthralling. David Jays
Black Men Walking
Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester
★★
The title itself is a challenge to expectations. Black people are not known for striding out in the hills with knapsacks on their backs. The rapper and theatre-maker Testament (aka Andy Brooks) questions many such assumptions as three men — old Thomas, a middle-aged doctor, Matthew, and the younger Richard — set out for a walk in the Peak District. They are looking for peace, but also to reconnect with the little-known history of black men and women in Britain who once walked the same land. It’s an appealing idea that proves difficult to realise on stage. While Matthew and Richard chat away and worry about the mist coming down, Tyrone Huggins’s Thomas seems to be in a different play as he chases imaginary spirits across the rocks. The older man recalls the prejudices of the past, while the young female rapper the trio improbably encounter, standing on a hill wearing very little clothing, is confronting the prejudices of the present. Can Thomas’s history really help her? Dawn Walton’s production struggles to create a whole out of the many different parts. Jane Edwardes
