★★★★

“a gem of a short play, and Katia Haddad draws the audience in with great skill”

Mariupol, Katia Haddad’s poignant drama set against the backdrop of the Ukrainian War, is currently playing at the Pleasance Courtyard Beneath. It’s a beautifully constructed drama about a Russian, Galina, and “Steve” a charming Ukrainian sailor. With deft direction by Guy Retallack, and starring Oliver Gomm and Nathalie Barclay, this is a play you won’t want to miss.

Thirty years pass from that first meeting of these two star crossed lovers in Mariupol. Steve, who got his name playing Stevie Wonder songs for his merchant navy friends, meets a beautiful Moscovite who he playfully nicknames Moskalka at his best friend’s wedding. Steve and Galina are immediately drawn to one another, and their connection is deepened by a night spent by the beautiful Azov Sea. Galina nearly drowns taking a sea shell during a night swim but Steve is there to rescue her, and bring her back to land. Despite the connection, however, Steve isn’t ready to leave the merchant navy, and they part. Galina returns to Moscow, where she puts her shell on a necklace and wears it during the years of teaching, marriage to a Russian, and motherhood to a son, Sasha. When Steve and Galina next meet, it is under less happy circumstances. The shadows of an impending war between Russia and Ukraine have already begun. What started as a light hearted dance at a wedding morphs into something more intense, and tragic. The stage is set for their third meeting in a bunker in Azovstal in 2022, as Russian bombs rain down on the ruined city. Galina is there frantically searching for her POW son, and begs Steve to help her.

Mariupol is a gem of a short play, and Katia Haddad draws the audience in with great skill. She has her own memories of Mariupol and its people to help her, and this shows in the fully rounded characters. They are sympathetically portrayed by Oliver Gomm and Nathalie Barclay. Gomm in particular charms with his initial playfulness, and then makes a convincing shift to the older Ukrainian warrior, haunted by everything he has lost. The whole production is designed to focus the attention on the performers, with a compelling sound track that mixes both the sounds of war with the sounds of the sea. The passing of time is skillfully sketched in by swift costume changes on stage—a jacket added, the tie of a dress untied and tied. These light touches allow the audience to focus fully on Haddad’s words, and the unfolding tragedy.

The show covers a lot of ground in an hour, but it’s time well spent. It is a vivid testament to the consequences of war—not just in ruined cities, and destruction of a way of life, but in the price that people pay with their own lives and the lives of those they love. Memories of a happier past are like the seashell Galina wears around her neck—infinitely precious, but fragile. As the world becomes more unstable, Mariupol is a powerful reminder of all we could lose if we ignore the tragedies unfolding around us.

THE KING’S SPEECH at the Watermill Theatre

★★★★

“Peter Sandys-Clarke gives an excellent performance as the ‘dear, dear man’ held in a vocal prison by his childhood trauma.”

Playwright David Seidler (1937–2024) developed a stammer at the age of three as his family travelled from the UK to the US in the early years of World War II. One of three ships in their convoy was destroyed by German U-Boats. Many kinds of speech therapy failed him until at the age of 16, and in a frustrated rage he shouted out the F-word.

Out of this traumatic experience came a playwright, and also his most memorable work, the screenplay for the film The King’s Speech, which is based on a true story. But Seidler’s wife said ‘why don’t you write it as a play?’, realising that the spatial limitations of theatre would enable it to focus on the key relationship at the heart of the piece. The 2010 film, starring Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush, was produced to great acclaim and won four Academy Awards. In 2012 the play opened in Guildford before touring the world in nine different languages.

The delightfully intimate Watermill Theatre is The Stage’s Theatre of the Year and has a reputation for unique shows which last long in the memory. This revival brilliantly embodies that tradition.

Directed by former Almeida resident director Emma Butler with insightful lighting by Ryan Day, and striking costume and set design by Bretta Gerecke, the play sheds new light on a much-loved and deeply poignant story.

The first act moves rapidly with a lot of plot to cover and many brief scenes, with a greater and more compelling focus after the interval.

If you have seen the film, you will recall that the relationship between the future King George VI (Peter Sandys-Clarke) and his wayward speech therapist Lionel Logue (Arthur Hughes) is the nub of the story. ‘Bertie’ the monarch-to-be is inventively dressed as ‘a thing of threads and patches’ – in a half-made suit that symbolises his status as a future king and as a stutterer ‘trapped in a broken body over which he has no control’. This symbolism is echoed in the set which consists largely of a disordered arc of swirling timber.

Peter Sandys-Clarke gives an excellent performance as the ‘dear, dear man’ held in a vocal prison by his childhood trauma. We see him fail to speak coherently at Wembley Stadium and the abuse to which he is subjected by his family. Against a backdrop of great affairs of state, including the death of a king and the abdication of another, an intimate and touching story of deepening friendship is played out between a plain-speaking Aussie and a very believably austere royal. Arthur Hughes shines as the genial and irreverent therapist, his performance somehow made all the more poignant by his own slight physical disability.

Aamira Challenger gives an elegantly restrained performance as the Princess Elizabeth and Jim Kitson makes the most of some excellent lines as a bluff and bustling Winston Churchill and King George V.

Rosa Hesmondhalgh (Myrtle Logue/Wallis Simpson) is endearing as an Australian shopgirl who gets invited to sit with the royals at a coronation. Christopher Naylor made the most of his role as the scheming Archbishop, Cosmo Lang and cricket sweater wearing Stephen Rahman-Hughes gives a new take on David, the Duke of Windsor who so memorably stood down from the throne as he could not uphold it without ‘the help and support of the woman I love’.

Tag Archives: Robin Colyer

MARIUPOL

★★★★

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

MARIUPOL

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

★★★★

“a gem of a short play, and Katia Haddad draws the audience in with great skill”

MARIUPOL

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Reviewed on 3rd August 2025 at Beneath at Pleasance Courtyard

by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Tom Crooke

MARIUPOL

MARIUPOL

MARIUPOL

THE KING’S SPEECH

★★★★

Watermill Theatre

THE KING’S SPEECH at the Watermill Theatre

★★★★

“Peter Sandys-Clarke gives an excellent performance as the ‘dear, dear man’ held in a vocal prison by his childhood trauma.”