Park Theatre

The only way I can think to describe Jean-Phillipe Daguerre’s massive Parisian stage hit Farewell Mister Haffmann is as an unnatural collision of Schindler’s List and Indecent Proposal. Proof that the French really are a bewilderingly freaky people. Joseph Haffman (Alex Waldmann) is the Jewish proprietor of a jewellery shop in Paris, 1942. He asks his trusted employee Pierre (Michael J Fox) if he might agree to take ownership of the business to protect it from the Germans, on the condition Joseph – whose wife and kids have escaped to Switzerland – is allowed to hide on the premises. Pierre makes a bizarre counter proposal: he is sterile, so asks that if he goes along with Joseph’s plan, might Joseph please boff his wholesome wife Isabelle (Jennifer Kirby) once a month until she’s pregnant? Sorry to say that I found this so insane that I struggled to engage with the first hour of the play. The premise is maybe just about plausible, but the execution is totally loopy. Having suggested and brokered this convoluted sexual arrangement, Pierre falls apart the second Isabelle and Joseph do it, something bombastically accentuated in Oscar Toeman’s production by the moodily lit scenes of Pierre frenziedly tap dancing upstairs while the others are getting it on in the basement. For their part Waldmann’s Joseph and Kirby’s Isabelle approach their task with the elan of schoolchildren wearily cracking on with their homework – whether Joseph feels any guilt about cheating on his wife we...

This new dark comedy from James McDermott follows a couple who’ve been together for 29 years and who don’t much care for each other, but have succeeded in rubbing along… until the pandemic locks them at home together with no other distractions. Scott Le Crass directs Kacey Ainsworth and Liam Tobin as disintegrating couple Anne and Don. 

Provocative US playwright and film maker Neil LaBute hasn’t had a stage premiere in this country for years, and some odd business went down in 2018 when the prestigious off-Broadway venue MCC Theater abruptly announced the termination of its relationship with him, for reasons that were never made public. Since then he’s worked in film and TV, but his only major new stage work was a show that premiered in Germany. Whatever happened, UK premiere How to Fight Loneliness is in fact from 2017 and therefore slightly predates the falling out with the US theatre scene so, er, it’s probably fine. Directed by Lisa Spirling – soon to take over as artistic director of Stratford East – LaBute’s play concerns Jodi and Brad, a happy couple whose lives are abruptly turned upside down, forcing them to turn to a shady figure from her past.