TARTUFFE REMIXED

Marylebone Theatre

★★★★★

“an evening of powerful, enriching theatre”

The extended family have gathered for a wedding. Pastor Blake (Mark Rylance) arrives to save a household that was managing perfectly well without him.

Usifu Jalloh’s Oga is the pious patriarch and a generous host. His daughter Adanna (Sara Mokonen) is engaged to Sinclair (Ivandro Da Cruz Leite), a nice young man who is in love with her. In an Iago-like move, Pastor Blake plants a seed of doubt in Oga’s mind about Sinclair’s faithfulness both to God and to Adanna. Oga responds by promising his daughter to the pastor instead. However, Pastor Blake has designs not just on Oga’s second wife Elmire (Nakeba Buchanan), but also on the family money.

Adaptor and director Darren Raymond writes in rhyming couplets, laced with spoken word and punctuated by Duramaney Kamara’s sound design and score. The rewriting of Molière’s script in Tartuffe Remixed reveals that Pastor Blake’s power is verbal. He weaponises his education and authority to make the family doubt one another.

This is a study in how the patriarchy weakens the tribe by imposing the paterfamilias’s blind spots on others, instead of combining everyone’s strengths. Oga loves his daughter Adanna. Yet he hands her on as though her life is merely his game of pass the parcel.

Molière’s original farce breaks through into this production when the groom’s father Delroy (Craig Blake) attempts to unveil the pastor’s fraud. This doesn’t go according to plan.

Morenike Onajobi’s Kemi is Adanna’s oldest friend. She’s been onto Pastor Blake from the beginning but hasn’t the status to intervene. Suzette Llewellyn’s Grandma and Blanche Williams’s Great-Grandma are convincing Afro-Caribbean elders. Christopher Mbaki’s D-Miz brings a noisy charm.

Raymond is Artistic Director of Intermission Youth. Most of this cast came up through it, with two of the charity’s graduates joining the company in rotation through the run. Rylance is a founding trustee. This superb show is what that investment produces.

ULTZ gives Oga a mansion worth stealing (though on the night I saw it, a light flickered distractingly, and I could not tell whether that was deliberate). The wedding clothes by Shola Ajayi (with Maybelle Laye as associate costume designer) were perfect, not straying beyond the stylish, tasteful side of flamboyant.

Molière was denied a church burial by the institution he satirised. By the end of this show, you can see why. Although entirely predictable, the denouement is the most moving ten minutes of theatre I have seen this year. The family returns to their faith, without any corrupt and corrupting mediator. The women have untangled the knotty problem, re-jigging the tribal power structure. In the end, the extended family submits not just to their Creator but to the higher purposes of strength, unity and peace within the tribe.

Full marks, all round. This is an evening of powerful, enriching theatre that restores one’s faith in humanity.

TARTUFFE REMIXED

Marylebone Theatre

Reviewed on 11th September 2026

by Elizabeth Botsford

Photography by Mark Senior

TARTUFFE REMIXED

★★★

“a thoughtful meditation on our relationship with the Earth”

Fire Fire, written by John Webber and directed by Jennifer Tang, brings together two people who could not initially seem more different. Eddie is holding a memorial for his brother, intending to scatter his ashes, while Paige is closing a road as part of a climate protest. Their first encounter is fiery, and although they repeatedly clash, their paths continue to cross until an unexpected bond begins to form.

The production has a striking simplicity to it, with Peiyao Wang’s set and costume design creating an evocative landscape of soil and steps, complemented by Charly Dunford’s shifting lighting design. The two-hander is punctuated by moments of self-reflection, allowing both characters to share something of their inner worlds. At its heart is an intriguing concept: a meeting between grief and activism, personal loss and collective responsibility, and two people whose different experiences of the world gradually reveal unexpected points of connection. There is also a strong reflection on different points of view, and on how our sense of identity, purpose and connection to ourselves can differ, while underneath it all we may be far more similar than we realise.

There is a lot of potential in this premise, particularly in the way it brings together questions of class, climate, grief and personal responsibility. However, the play sometimes gets caught in a succession of events that leaves little room for the audience to pause and reflect. The stakes are high almost from the beginning, and as they continue to escalate, there are few opportunities to simply sit with the characters or allow their relationship to develop at a quieter pace. The result can feel emotionally tiring rather than increasingly affecting.

Some of the strongest moments are also the simplest. There are flashes of comedy rooted in recognisable human behaviour, and these moments bring a welcome sense of reality to the conversations. More of this grounded, everyday quality could have made the exchanges feel more natural. At times, the dialogue feels closer to a book being read aloud than two people genuinely talking to each other, with the dramatic weight of each new event sometimes taking precedence over the intimacy of the relationship.

The performances, however, are committed and generous. Gabrielle Brooks and Chris Simmons give the production everything, navigating its emotional and physical demands with energy. The moment involving Eddie’s brother’s ashes is particularly beautiful and deeply affecting, creating a rare stillness in a play that otherwise moves relentlessly forward.

Fire Fire offers a thoughtful meditation on our relationship with the Earth, the climate crisis and the direction in which the world is heading. Its central idea of finding common ground between people who appear to occupy opposing sides is timely and full of possibility. With more space to breathe, reflect and allow its characters to simply exist together, the play could perhaps have allowed some of its most powerful ideas to land more deeply.

Tag Archives: Review

TARTUFFE REMIXED

★★★★★

Marylebone Theatre

TARTUFFE REMIXED

Marylebone Theatre

★★★★★

“an evening of powerful, enriching theatre”