28 December 2017. The Jungle at the Young Vic

This acclaimed production at the Young Vic explores what is an appropriate response to the jungle camp at Calais.It is the work of two Oxford graduates - joe Murphy and joe Robertson - who brought the Good Chance Theatre to the camp before the French demolished it. The action takes place in a re-creation of the Afghan restaurant at the camp. The action starts at the end - with the CRS coming to demolish the camp as well as with the death on a motorway of one of the young men we subsequently get to know.
The play features the British who come to help alongside the camp's inhabitants who are desperate to get to UK - a land that exists as an ideal of tolerance and good law in their minds. It is a sobering evening and I came out feeling quite subdued by the events. We certainly have to face whether we should be doing more and are asked to contrast our response with that of Jordan. We are also offered evidence of May's apparently distinctly un-Christian approach as Home Secretary in her failure to welcome unaccompanied children. However, there was a time when I felt we were being rather hammered and this seemed unnecessary given the nature of the audience - surely Guardian readers all.
The acting was amazing as was the choreography of the brawls that seemed to flare up all too easily in the camp. All in all, for me, an affecting evening but not one that quite lived up to the five stars for which I had prepared myself.

27 December 2017. Follies at the National Theatre

I really enjoyed this Sondheim musical at the National Theatre, staring Imelda Staunton as Sally. She is one of the ex-dancers attending a reunion at the Weismann theatre in New York before it is demolished to make way for offices. The play consists of present day drama explained by flashbacks to the time when Sally and her contemporaries were performing. She had a best friend Phyllis and they were suited by Ben and Buddy, a couple of friends who waited for the girls each night after the show. The complication was that Sally really had fallen for Ben but ended up with Buddy. Phyllis seemingly was happy to try and fit to Ben's privileged world but, as we are told by the characters in their present-time coming together at the reunion, she ended up materially comfortable but without intimacy.
Even now Sally still loves Ben and hopes the reunion will be her chance to rectify the mistaken paths of the past. This is not to be, however and she ends the play still with the wretched Buddy who has always felt her lack of ardour for him.
so, essentially we have a quite sad play that explores the follies of human relationships. Each character has their own folly - or paradox and these are explored and made explicit at the end. I found it thoroughly engaging and insightful as well as being the usual high end National Theatre production.