The Week on Stage, from Marys Seacole to Punchdrunk’s The Burnt City

The highs and lows of the week’s theatre

From L-R: ‘The Burnt City’, ‘Marys Seacole’, ‘The Bone Sparrow' (Julian Abrams/Marc Brenner/Robert Day )

This week’s theatre round-up features a refugee children’s story, Marys Seacole at the Donmar and Punchdrunk’s new immersive production.

Check back next week for another selection of stage productions, including Prima Facie, The Corn is Green and the return of Jerusalem.

The Burnt City – One Cartridge Place ★★★★☆

When a pandemic hits, your first thought probably isn’t: “Oh god, what will happen to immersive theatre?” But after two years without touch , there’s an excited, dangerous buzz as we step into the ancient city of Troy, setting for The Burnt City, the new show from cult favourites Punchdrunk. This time, the company’s home is a former military arsenal in Woolwich – a fitting home for a story of woe, anguish and violence.

We enter through a museum exhibition, displaying a private collection of ancient Greek artefacts. As the audience moves through a dark maze, large masks distorting their vision, a glitching message repeatedly warns that a young girl is about to be sacrificed.

Yilin Kong in ‘The Burnt City’ (Julian Abrams)

Inside the unassuming warehouse, Punchdrunk have created an enthralling world of microscopic details, meticulously crafted to entice. The ancient crashes into the modern, detouring via art deco jazz bars and seedy, neon-lit alleys. It’s a sensory overload of oppositional forces where booming, bass-y soundscapes swell in plush boudoirs with scallop-shaped headboards and you feel sand under foot as “Swing” plays in the distance.

You could spend hours inside simply reading every leaflet or touching every artefact – although a sign warns us not to steal as “the gods are watching”. As for the plot? There’s a lot of screaming and fighting, culminating (at least for me) in the shocking sight of a half-naked girl spinning from her feet above the crowds. Through mime, movement and dance, we see a city on the brink of war, where chaos reigns. Could I tell you what actually happened? Probably not – it’s all Greek to me… Isobel Lewis

Marys Seacole – Donmar Warehouse ★★★★☆

Mary Seacole is one of the foremost names in Black British history, but her story’s still unknown to many. From the title of Jackie Sibblies Drury’s play Marys Seacole, you may expect the action on stage to be a straightforward biography of the Jamaican-born Crimean war nurse – but note the additional “s” at the end of her first name, which indicates otherwise.

Kayla Meikle in ‘Marys Seacole’ (Marc Brenner)

The reason for this misspelling becomes clear when this ambitious production is looked at as a larger nod to the role that Black women have had in health and care for centuries. At the centre of this six-member ensemble piece is Mary, played with passion by Kayla Meikle. She’s a grounding presence as the drama shifts through time and location: one minute she’s Seacole, tending to her injured “sons” on the battlefield in 1800s Crimea, the next she’s a current-day NHS worker cleaning up a soiled elderly woman with barely a blink.

There’s so much to be said for the tension of race and power when it comes to providing care, and Marys Seacole tries hard to say it all. Occasionally, it means that the message becomes muddled, with the audience battling with what exactly to take in – motherhood, the indignities of caring and being cared for and the limits of compassion all battle for attention. But the energy and commitment that the performers bring to their many roles is undeniable. Moments of confusion aside, it’s a timely tribute brimming with unexpected potency. Nicole Vassell

The Bone Sparrow – Theatre Peckham ★★★★☆

At a time when refugees are demonised and reduced to a mass, it’s never been more important to put a human face to the humanitarian crisis. Pilot Theatre’s adaptation of Zana Fraillon’s children’s book plucks out Subhi (Yaamin Chowdhury), a young boy who’s spent his life in an Australian immigration detention centre, as their representative. Steel beds and cold porridge are all he’s ever known. When his family tell tales about their old lives on the outside, he is enraptured, trying to imagine what something as fantastical as the sea even looks like.

Yaamin Chowdhury’s Subhi is all wide eyes and slack jaws, a total naivety given to the character. It’s not entirely clear whether Subhi, or his friend Jimmie (Mary Roubos) is a particularly innocent teenager or a literal child (in lieu of knowing his age, Subhi describes himself as being “21 fence diamonds high”), but it doesn’t particularly matter.

Yaamin Chowdhury and Mary Roubos in ‘The Bone Sparrow' (Robert Day)

At just over two-and-a-half hours, S Shakthidharan’s script could do with a fair bit of pruning. But for the most part, the show is able to keep our attention. On stage, a rich world is created. Music swells. Fabric waves ripple. Cheesy patterns and swirling shapes illuminate the back of the stage.

When puppets come on stage, the show really shines. Birds flit across the stage, while puppeteer Jummy Faruq makes everything from a crying baby to a giant Shakespeare rubber duck (providing most of the show’s laughs) feel like an extension of her body. They are moments of dazzling light that never take away from the show’s sombre surroundings. Isobel Lewis