Why do theatres think audiences want Covid-related drama?

Hats off to the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond. They’ve discovered a new form of racism. Some people say we have enough ethnic division already but in south-west London they’re gagging for more apparently. A new play, Prodigal, examines the prejudice endured by a Ugandan chap whose mother moved to London when he was a child and whose younger siblings are British. Family tensions depressed him. ‘You all made me feel ugly,’ he moans.

The shifty whinger has returned home after his mother’s death in order to cheat his family out of an insurance pay-off. It’s remarkable to see a drama that reinforces a damaging stereotype but the author, Kalungi Ssebandeke, is content to put a bungling African crook on stage. His sister refuses to let him into the flat and hoses him down with rancid abuse. This too is a dreary cliché — the gobby south London airhead whose speech is soured by low–calibre aggression. ‘You fink da world revolves around you, but guess what, it don’t,’ is one of her wittier utterances. This nasty, flimsy melodrama lasts barely half an hour.

Its companion piece, The Kiss, introduces us to an even more rarefied form of prejudice. Zoe Cooper’s play is a monologue spoken by a black lesbian, Lou, who plans to start a course of IVF with her partner, Sophie. The couple have abandoned London to spend lockdown in a northern city. But Lou suspects her new neighbours of greeting her insincerely. ‘Despite the rainbow welcoming committee there’s something a bit too keen,’ she says. Sophie, who happens to be a blonde, doesn’t share her mistrust. ‘Things like this happen less to her,’ comments Lou.

Sophie is working as a teacher while poor old Lou, furloughed from her café job, spends her days moping around the kitchen and watching kids bickering over footballs and skipping ropes in the park.