TThe big news of the week was the announcement that after 11 spectacular years, Rupert Gould is leaving Almeida. In 2026 he will bring his brilliance to the Old Vic, taking over from Matthew Warchus. The consequences reach beyond a building. In two years, all three major theaters in South London will have new artistic directors, with Indhu Rubasingham at National and Nadia Fall at the Young Vic. Here’s a West End theatrical alternative: Boulevard at Sunrise.
Meanwhile, the smaller spaces are occupied with provocations. Not least Bush, run by Lynette (come on, Almeida) Linton. Eleanor Tyndall’s new play was to be called Tenderised. There are several gently romantic passages Gentlebut the brightest moments are connected not with sweet exchanges, but with painful preparation for new love.
Annabelle Baldwin’s ash, sharp in denim, has given up dating men. Bright and alert as a redhead, she’s dashing around at Aphrodyki’s club nights when she meets Nadi Kemp-Saifee’s Ivy serving up an almond croissant and flat white for £8.75 (which had the crowd gasping). Camp-Syphy – slightly disheveled in a cardi and with a vague aspect – has a steady boyfriend and a background of buried secrets and self-harm. There is a bloody thread to the ensuing love affair and a menacing undertone; in a plot full of coincidences, the two women find themselves with overlapping pasts and futures.
The plot goes off on, um, half cock, with too many unintegrated events. Yet the detail in Emily Aboud’s production is sensational. In the small Bush Studio, a spectator is so close to the stage that he can look with a magnifying glass or listen with amplifiers. Tyndall’s dialogue is light, rhythmic, faithful: this is evident from the first seconds, when she manages to sneak into Ash’s speech both a description and an imitation of an aftershave-soaked estate agent. Baldwin and Kemp-Saife are precise and delicate. Framing the dialogue with slight grimaces, teasing winks, they don’t so much interrupt as dart through each other.
Alice Whitehead, who designed the understated but noticeable costumes, created the yellowest set I’ve ever seen: a yellow pouf with detachable sections and, at the back of the stage, buttercup curtains. These curtains sway and pop at crucial moments, seeming to melt the walls. Accompanied by the whine and jingle of Ellie Isherwood’s sound design, they envelop the romance in strangeness; sometimes we might be in the strange world of 19th century feminist sensation charlotte perkins gilman The yellow wallpaper. Other touches are so small it’s a wonder they register: indeed, it’s a wonder they’re implemented at all. As Ash dreams of Ivy, she talks about the ring she wears on her thumb; on the other side of the stage, Kemp-Syphy sits quietly, absolutely still, but slightly turning this ring.
It’s hard to fault the momentum behind Emteaz Hussain’s new game. It’s also hard to miss. The action takes place in the fall of 2011. in a deindustrialized town in northern England. Expendable examines a family involved in allegations of sexual contact and abuse. The family is British-Pakistani; the girls grabbed are mostly (not only) white; the action, characters and setting are fictional but based on circumstances in Rochdale and Rotherham. Of particular interest is its unusual focus: events are seen through the eyes of casually involved British-Pakistani women.
Esther Richardson’s deliberate production points to a knot of difficulties: easy-to-inflame racism (when a young boy is wrongly accused of caring, nonsense is regularly posted to his mother’s letterbox); misogyny in families under siege, where a woman cowers under her kitchen table at a knock on the door; seditious sectarian gathering. The intertwined horrors are entirely convincing, as is the argument that the cities were less racially segregated than claimed. Lena Kaur gives a strong rebellious performance; Natasha Jenkins delivers a solid kitchen sink design, riddled with doors and windows, none of which offer escape until the very end. Yet too many attitudes are simply passed off as talking points. The evening promises more urgency than it delivers. And yet it is not for consumption.
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Star ratings (out of five)
Gentle ★★★
Expendable ★★★
