Hi hi,

I've been getting into watching plays from the National Theatre app, if you've not tried it I definitely recommend it. It used to cost about as much as a streaming service, but now it seems to be free. I don't know how long that is going to last so maybe now would be a good time to try it out.

This newsletter was inspired by watching Lucy Kirkwood's Mosquitoes last week. It's got Olivia Colman and Olivia Williams in it, so really the top two Olivias, and it's as good as you might imagine from that. It's also kind of baggy! Don't let that put you off though:

It juggles so many strands, personalities and ideas that it hasn’t a hope of keeping them all in the air, but every single one of them makes a fascinating pattern as it falls.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2142234-mosquitoes-staring-into-the-heat-death-of-the-universe/

A short play, maybe good for a weekday night, is Polly Stenham's Julie. It's an excellently staged retelling of Stringberg's Miss Julie, and it messed with my emotions in a way I really enjoyed. Here's an interview with the director, Carrie Cracknell, which illuminates a lot about what was good in Julie:

"I do think we live in a culture of liking to know where we're being led," she says. "I would much rather be drawn into a work, and asked lots of difficult questions, than be taken on a well-worn story where I know what the outcome will be." She pauses then adds: "We still make enormous divisions between dance and theatre, and actually all acting is movement. All acting is breath."

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/jul/15/medea-national-theatre-dance-carrie-cracknell

Here's another play adapted from another play, it's Yerma from the Lorca. This wasn't adapted by a woman but obviously the main character was a woman and she was played by Billie Piper who is SO SO GOOD. It's a pretty brutal watch so I can't recommend it if you're feeling sad about basically anything but especially parenting related stuff. If you think it's the sort of thing you could like, though, I can't recommend it highly enough:

https://www.ntathome.com/products/yerma

Love,

Alex.