The Heresy Of Love, London
Helen Edmundson’s work has always featured strong women, notably the Shared Experience adaptations of Anna Karenina and The Mill On The Floss. Her play The Heresy Of Love, first performed in 2012, now revived at Shakespeare’s Globe, is set in Mexico of the 1600s and based on the life of nun, poet and scholar Juana Inés de la Cruz, who exhibited precocious self-taught knowledge from an early age – she had professional discussions with Isaac Newton – and extolled women’s education. The play, a religious thriller in the style of a Spanish Golden Age drama, explores the conflict between de la Cruz’s faith, education and the Church. Edmundson’s next offering, Queen Anne, will be premiered by the RSC’s Swan Theatre in November.
Shakespeare’s Globe, SE1, Sat to 5 Sep
MC
A Gambler’s Guide To Dying, Glasgow & Edinburgh
What is the purpose of life – and what do we leave after we’ve gone? Gary McNair asks the big questions in his latest show which like his last, Donald Robertson Is Not A Stand-up Comedian, plays the Traverse as part of the Edinburgh fringe. It’s the story of a man who won a huge bet on the 1966 World Cup. Diagnosed with cancer, he places another bet he’ll live to see the year 2000. A tale exploring the urge to beat the odds, it’s in terrific company in a Traverse programme that also includes Bryony Kimmings and Tim Grayburn’s show about depression, Fake It ’Til You Make It (to 30 Aug), and Annie Ryan’s stage version of Eimear McBride’s A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing (to 30 Aug).
Tron, Glasgow, Sat; Traverse, Edinburgh, Thu & Fri, to 30 Aug
LG
Enlightenment, Keswick
The play that began Hampstead Theatre’s renaissance under Edward Hall in 2010, Shelagh Stephenson’s unsettling thriller focuses on a couple, Lia and Nick, who are living a nightmare. Their son Adam disappeared six months previously while on his gap year travels in Indonesia, and must be presumed dead. But Lia refuses to accept that her son is deceased – and it appears that she might be right, because after agreeing to appear in a TV documentary it seems that Adam has been found. But the young man who turns up at the couple’s home and takes up residence there is clearly not Adam at all. A mix of metaphysical speculation and sharp one-liners, Stephenson’s play lays bare grief, guilt and moral murkiness, and drives home the fact that we can take nothing in life for granted.
Theatre By The Lake, Sat to 7 Nov
LG
Briefs, London
Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a humpy night. That’s if you head to the South Bank to see Briefs, the Aussie extravaganza that sold out its Second Coming show last year and is now in its third, er, coming, having toured the world and played Glastonbury. It’s not for your maiden aunt, being a combination of terrific aerobatic and circus skills (yo-yos anyone?), “boylesque” and drag (it’s been described as Cirque du Soleil meets Ru Paul’s Drag Race). It’s in your face, but also sexy, clever and very self-aware. For more camp OTT-ness, try The Supreme Fabulettes, at Leicester Square Theatre, to 29 Aug.
London Wonderground at Southbank Centre, SE1, Wed to 27 Sep
MC
Light Boxes, Edinburgh
Summerhall is the upstart venue that, along with initiatives such as Forest Fringe, has changed the face of the fringe, proving that there is an audience during the Edinburgh shindig for genuinely radical work. The Scottish company Grid Iron may now be over 20 years old but it, too, changed the face of the fringe in its day with its pioneering, site-specific promenade productions. Today, it continues to question where theatre happens and what form it can take. This latest Grid Iron piece is a postmodern fairytale; adapted from Shane Jones’s 2010 novel, it is set in a world where it has been February for over 100 days and war looms in a town where everyone has been overcome by sadness. Fin den Hertog’s production makes smart use of video, live music and projections.
Summerhall, Fri to 30 Aug
LG
Blake Remixed, Edinburgh
If William Blake was alive today, would he be a hip-hop artist? The Leeds-based champion beatboxer and rapper Testament reckons he might have been. So, Blake’s poetry meets contemporary rap as Testament weaves a story that seeks out connections between his own life and that of the romantic poetic who championed social justice. The show, which also features DJ Woody, a world-champion scratch DJ, was developed at West Yorkshire Playhouse as part of its Furnace strand, and will return to Leeds after the festival. Tom Wright, an associate director of Bradford’s Freedom Studios, directs a show that’s part of a growing body of theatre shows incorporating beatboxing and rap.
Underbelly, Thu to 29 Aug
LG
