Lyn's Picks: Aug 23

Family Tree (Charlton House Gardens)

Greenwich and Docklands International Festival kicks off this week, and features Requardt and Rosenberg’s Future Cargo in the Royal Docks, a site-responsive production of Dennis Potter’s Blue Remembered Hills, and Jeanefer Jean-Charles’ Black Victorians both in Woolwich and the City of London. It also features Family Tree, the latest from Actors Touring Company who will be performing outside at Charlton House Gardens with Mojisola Adebayo’s play which takes its inspiration from the story of Henrietta Lacks, the African-American woman who died of cervical cancer in the 1950s and whose cells were harvested for medical experimentation without her consent.

Hamilton (Victoria Palace)

Commercial theatre’s road back to live performance has been a rocky one, but one of the signs that confidence is growing is the return of the big hitters. That definitely includes Lin-Manuel Miranda’s improbable but glorious musical about America’s founding fathers. It’s a delight: witty, musically inventive and unexpectedly moving too, and I suspect that the show’s availability online over the lockdowns will only add to the demand. But there are plenty of tickets available from September onwards, so here’s your chance.

Horizon Showcase 2021 (online)

Two years ago before the pandemic Arts Council England decided to invest for three years in a showcase of English work at the Edinburgh. It was something that other home nations were already doing very successfully. This year’s pilot is entirely online, is curated by some major players including Battersea Arts Centre, Fierce Festival, Dance4 and Mayak, and features ready to tour shows from a wide range of artists including Joshua Sofaer, Chinese Arts Now, Brownton Abbey Talk Show and more. The emphasis is definitely on performance rather than theatre but such definitions are arbitrary and the showcase includes embraces the radical, the different and the new.

Cover image from Family Tree.