Lyn's Picks: Nov 1

Little Scratch (Hampstead Downstairs)

Playwright Miriam Battye has just won the Pinter Commission which will support her to write a play for the Royal Court. Battye you may recall had a hit just before lockdown with Scenes with Girls a very funny and sharply written excavation of female friendship. Now she turns her attention to Rebecca Watson’s strange but strangely compelling novel about a woman experiencing a very ordinary day but whose thoughts are gradually intruded on by a trauma she has survived. It’s a novel that has some kinship with Virginia Woolf’s the Waves so perhaps its no surprise to find it is being staged by none other than Katie Mitchell. Another bonus is that it features a soundscape by Melanie Wilson. The omens are very good.

Milk and Gall (Theatre 503)

I read an early version of Mathilde Dratwa’s play about a woman giving birth in New York on election night 2016 as Donald Trump is swept to power. It is utterly distinctive, utterly itself, some might say impossible to stage. But always one to take on a challenge it is being staged by Theatre 503’s artistic director, Lisa Spirling, and stars MyAnna Buring (so good in Lucy Prebble’s A Very Expensive Poison) as Vera a woman who finds her life and certainties shattered and who wonders how to make a future for her new baby in an America on the brink of change.

The Seven Pomegranate Seeds (Rose, Kingston)

What if Persephone was to be found walking down your local street? How would Medea’s story play out in 21st century Britain? Would Phaedra’s inappropriate passion make the front page of the tabloids. How would a modern-day Creusa deal with the guilt of an abandoned baby? Seven stories about seven women who all appear in plays by Euripides are retold by playwright Colin Teevan and ace director Melly Still who directed Elena Ferante’s My Brilliant Friend which transferred from the Rose to the National Theatre. Niamh Cusack and Shannon Hayes star in a production that shines a new and contemporary light on Greek mythology and continues the reinvention of the Rose under new artistic director Christopher Haydon.