★★★★

“The quick cross-cuts and quicker dialogue give the play the propulsive quality of a thriller”

Big Cranberry, written and directed by Joe Edgar, is a play with ambitions even larger than its eponymous fruit. In its pithy runtime of seventy-five minutes it attempts to analyse the macro-economic systems responsible for ecological collapse, show their impact on the communities affected, examine the role media reporting plays, stage a debate on how best to make tangible change in a corrupted world – and do all this with enough tart wit and emotional punch to keep an audience gripped to their seats. To its great credit it largely succeeds.

It does so in part through its clever narrative framework. The play takes place at an after-hours cutting-room floor session in the Boston Globe, where investigative journalist Marianne – played magnetically by Molly Hanley – is having her piece of reportage on the ills of the Massachusetts cranberry industry stress-tested by her colleagues. The amount of information we receive is at first a little dizzying, but the snappy dialogue and dynamic staging, not to mention the brilliant chemistry on stage, make this nutritious but slightly bitter little morsel easier to swallow. The journalists read her article like a play, acting out the parts of Marianne’s interviewees, and soon we are slipping seamlessly between the office in Boston and her journey through rural Massachusetts. In the most striking of these transitions, the newsroom desks are instantaneously metamorphosed into a car, whisking Marianne away through the country night as she talks to her therapist – with no little dry wit. The quick cross-cuts and quicker dialogue give the play the propulsive quality of a thriller.

While the investigative element of the story is largely deftly handled, its emotional heart lies with Marianne, whose faith in resistance to the dominant systems of destructive power is sorely tested. On paper her character, like many of the cast, can be boiled down to a trope: the neurotic high-achiever with a pushy mother whose insatiable demands exact Sisyphean efforts in search of approval. But on the stage she inhabits the role entirely, and several scenes towards the end, one with rewilder Jeremy – whose character is also granted emotional depth by Xavier Starr – and another with her boss Gloria, are genuinely affecting. The use of stock characters, as well as the occasional clunky plot device, seem to me necessary anchors for a whirlwind of a play, and there are enough surprises in there to keep them fresh.

Ultimately, this is a slick, well-written, well-directed play with strong performances from all four cast members and good staging; Gabriel Finn’s lighting is subtle but effective. It won’t tear down the edifice of extractivism – what will? – but it may offer some desperately needed catharsis and hope for those disheartened by the lack of progress in combating the climate crisis – and its humour and dramatic flair are more than just a garnish.

HAVISHAM

Jack Studio Theatre

★★★

“The script is rich and lyrical although the elaborate metaphors occasionally lose their way”

We know Miss Havisham as the heartless manipulator of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. She is indelibly printed on our minds – dressed in cobwebs and a faded wedding gown, time frozen on the day she was jilted.

But how did she arrive at such an horrendous fate?

In her earnest solo production, writer and performer Heather Alexander aims to put paper-thin flesh on brittle bones, creating an origin story for the striking monster. She takes Miss Havisham from the misery of her childhood to the edge of love and fulfilment. The story that emerges is one of bitterness that accumulates over time like a hardening residue.

Under Dominique Gerrard’s formal direction, the busy set foretells of an eerie fate. It is dressed with bridal gowns and white veils, a clock ticking obtrusively but forever fixed at 20 minutes to nine.

Centre stage, there is a bed – or is it a coffin? Ghostly Miss Havisham rises from her slumber to tell a tale of a motherless girl, confused, unloved and fearful of God, death and her brutish father.

There is something of Norma “Sunset Boulevard” Desmond in Alexander’s feline physicality and phrasing: wide eyes, angular posing and an epic grandeur forever tumbling towards tantrum.

Her tragic isolation is underscored by her differences: rich amid the poor, girl among boys, a child with everything but nothing that matters. In a pivotal school room blunder she confuses Medusa for an angel and becomes in her own mind, a bad girl, a cursed girl, destined only to wound and harden hearts.

After a poor start in life, matters get worse, and the first act is a testing run of merciless catastrophes. The script is rich and lyrical although the elaborate metaphors occasionally lose their way. (Is “jumping into the box of life” really an image of freedom and exploration?)

After the rigours of the first act – where the tone is relentlessly morbid – Miss Havisham finally blossoms. She emerges in London a young woman capable of catching the eye of James, a dashing actor who appears loving and attentive if, er, unreliable.

Dotted about the story are reminders of the culmination – Satis House, a tragic girl named Stella, the ominous marshes hiding secrets in their billowing fog. We wonder if this Miss Havisham will grow sufficiently to match Dickens’ capacious version. We sit like engineers planning a trans-continental railway hoping the tracks from east and west will meet precisely.

The answer is: not quite, but only out by an inch or two.

Dickens’ Havisham is necessarily a gothic horror, a fully-formed, self-starting force of vengeance and malevolence. Alexander’s is a more modern interpretation: a woman as a reaction to her environment and trauma, a pitiful victim of men and their predations.

In an accomplished display, Heather Alexander fully embodies this icon of literature. It is a well-organised portrayal; perhaps not the baroque portrait it aspires to be but, instead, a chilling mosaic compiled from fragments and shards.

BIG CRANBERRY

Jack Studio Theatre

★★★★

“The quick cross-cuts and quicker dialogue give the play the propulsive quality of a thriller”

BIG CRANBERRY

Jack Studio Theatre

Reviewed on 20th November 2025

by Peter Jacobs

Photography by Sosij Productions

Previously reviewed at this venue:

BIG CRANBERRY

BIG CRANBERRY

BIG CRANBERRY

HAVISHAM

Jack Studio Theatre

★★★

“The script is rich and lyrical although the elaborate metaphors occasionally lose their way”

HAVISHAM

Jack Studio Theatre

Reviewed on 13th March 2025

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Peter Mould

Previously reviewed at this venue:

HAVISHAM

HAVISHAM

HAVISHAM

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