'Superb' romantic comedy brings 'bittersweet tenderness'

The Bush Theatre in West London has long championed new theatrical voices, said Dzifa Benson in The Telegraph – and under the leadership of artistic director Lynette Linton, it is "punching well above its weight in 2024". 

It recently transferred "Red Pitch", about three young Black footballers on a gentrifying estate, to the West End; now, the Congolese-British playwright Benedict Lombe's "superb" romantic comedy "Shifters" is moving to the Duke of York's Theatre with "much glitzy fanfare", thanks to its starry line-up of new backers (which includes Idris Elba). Funny and "unabashedly romantic", yet covering "epic existential themes", the play is a triumph that has had audiences getting to their feet and "whooping".
 
This "beautiful" two-hander is about two thirtysomethings, Des and Dre, who first met at school as teenagers, and who meet again, years later, at his grandmother's funeral, said Sarah Hemming in the FT. Brilliantly staged by Linton, it "plays like a piece of jazz, looping back and forth between past and present". And though it owes a debt to Nick Payne's time-twisting drama "Constellations", Lombe "has a warm, seductive style of her own, slipping from sharp comedy to meditative soulfulness in an instant". 

This is "inventive, emotionally astute writing", said Alice Saville in The Independent – and the "will-they-won't-they" story gets a "fevered reaction" from the audience, who "hang on tight through every twist and turn". 
It helps that the play's two stars have "thermonuclear charisma", said Rachel Halliburton in The Times. Tosin Cole, as Dre, has a "rooted, laid-back charm that's a winning antidote to Heather Agyepong's sharp-as-a-scalpel perfectionism". 

The pair pull you effortlessly into the play's "bittersweet tenderness", agreed Tom Wicker in The Stage. Cole "brings easy charm to Dre and a faltering smile that speaks volumes", while Agyepong's Des "bristles with self-protection, but also a compassionate curiosity that cracks her own defences". The pair make "every line sing: they're hugely funny, but teetering on the edge of heartbreak".

Duke of York’s Theatre, London WC2. Until 12 October 

by Sarah Rainsford   

When an 18-year-old Sarah Rainsford first visited Russia in 1992, she encountered a "warm, chaotic" country that struck her as having "unlimited possibility", said Charlotte Hobson in The Spectator. "She stayed on, studied, worked in an Irish bar in St Petersburg, joined the BBC in 2000 and, after spells in other parts of the world, returned to Moscow as a Russian correspondent from 2014."

But in 2021, her sojourn came to an end: like many other foreign journalists, she was expelled, with no right of return. Now based in Warsaw (she's the BBC's eastern Europe correspondent), Rainsford has written a powerful account of her 30-year relationship with Russia. "Structured as a patchwork of scenes from her experiences, personal and professional, the book is suffused with affection and self-deprecating humour". And it builds to a climax of "undoubted emotional power", as the invasion of Ukraine confirms how far Russia has travelled from the country Rainsford fell in love with.

I read this "excellent memoir" with a "wry smile", said Luke Harding in The Guardian. For, in 2011, I was "expelled in similar circumstances". In both cases, our expulsions were preceded by visits from "FSB goons", who left "f**k you" calling cards in our apartments: a sex manual in mine, and "a large unflushed deposit in each toilet" in Rainsford's. What her book captures so well is Russia's "dysfunctional slide into mass murder". Mid-1990s Russia may have been a "gangster's paradise", but for Rainsford, as for so many others, it seemed to have a "bright future". No longer. "There is little left," she notes, "that does not seem tainted."

"Looming over the book is the personality of Vladimir Putin, whose career, like Rainsford's, stretches from the rackety St Petersburg of the 1990s to imperial Moscow and its devastating war machine," said Edward Lucas in The Times. From the start, she writes, Putin wanted to "remake the Russian state as a fearsome instrument of power". But for a long time, there was "enough normality" for his objective to remain obscure. Unlike many foreign correspondents, Rainsford is "not a swaggerer". Her "drawn-out expulsion" from Russia became an international incident, but she describes it as "stupidly unimportant". In fact, she is a bit too "self-effacing": at times, "readers may wish to know a bit more about the person making the sharp-eyed, empathetic observations". Nonetheless, her book is an important account of Russia's transformation, from a place that "bewitched outsiders" into the "nightmare" of today.

Bestselling cookery writer and legend of nouvelle cuisine

The French chef Michel Guérard, who has died aged 91, was "the last living legend" of nouvelle cuisine, said Le Monde. A three-Michelin-star chef from 1977 onwards at his restaurant Les Prés d'Eugénie, in Eugénie-les-Bains in southwest France, he was the author of bestsellers including 1976's "La Grande Cuisine Minceur" (The Cuisine of Slimness), which "amplified his international renown". Paraphrasing Claude Monet, Guérard liked to say that he aspired "to cook as a bird sings". His culinary philosophy was "free and joyful, combining accuracy with fluidity – made possible by the former pastry chef's technical mastery and encyclopedic knowledge of culinary history".

Michel Guérard was born in Vétheuil, a village northwest of Paris, the son of a butcher, said The Guardian. At 14 he was apprenticed to a pâtissier in nearby Mantes-la-Jolie. "There is no better training for a chef than patisserie, which imparts routine, precision and delicacy." As a cook, he worked his way up from a coaching inn near Dieppe to the Paris Lido on the Champs-Élysées. His parents, though, wanted him securely set up in an owner-occupied business. So in 1965 he purchased, from an official receiver, Le Pot-au-Feu, a run-down bistro in the industrial Paris suburb of Asnières. "It was all he could afford." Opposite a factory, it had only 28 covers; but he transformed it from "a hang-out for locals into a destination for the capital's high-living inhabitants". Le Pot-au-Feu gained a Michelin star in 1967 and two stars in 1969; but soon after, the site was compulsorily purchased to make way for a road.

Around this time, Guérard met his future wife, Christine Barthélémy, who ran a health resort at Eugénie-les-Bains. In 1974, Guérard took control of its kitchens. While there, like a number of like-minded chefs, he broke away from classical cuisine "in search of greater lightness, directness and invention". His restaurant "exemplified the singularities of nouvelle cuisine: plate service under silver domes; the chef-proprietor interacting with his customers as well as his chopping board; the emphasis on short cooking; the delight in sweet-acid combinations". His book "La Grande Cuisine Minceur" – originally recipes for dieting visitors to the resort – sold a million copies worldwide. As a result, in Britain and the US, nouvelle cuisine was often seen as a kind of diet food; he featured in cartoon form on the front of Time, under the headline "Hold the Butter". He worked at Eugénie for the rest of his career, pursuing other ventures during the winter closure. "His influence on French restaurants was immeasurable."