Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Promises, promises

Plus: if Donmar’s delicious adaptation of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie doesn't reach Broadway, what's Broadway for?

issue 30 June 2018

  • An Octoroon

    Dorfman Theatre, until 18 July

  • The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

    Donmar Warehouse, until 28 July

Intriguing word, ‘octoroon’. Does it mean an eight-sided almond-flavoured cakelet? No, it’s a person whose ancestry is one eighth black. New Yorker Branden Jacobs-Jenkins wants to explore this factoid in his farce An Octoroon, which opens with an angry African-American playwright delivering a comic monologue. He tells us a story about ‘my shrink’.

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