Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Teacher recruitment can be difficult but even so, you\u2019d hope that your child\u2019s primary school might manage to avoid hiring a vampire. No such luck for Mia (Sophie Melville) in John Donnelly\u2019s new play Apex Predator. She\u2019s initially pleased to bond with her son Alfie\u2019s temporary teacher, Ana \u2014 particularly as Ana (Laura Whitmore, chillingly elusive) sees extraordinary talent in Alfie\u2019s frankly disturbing drawings (figures with knives for teeth, that kind of thing).Sure, there are some odd moments \u2014 like Ana\u2019s appreciative description of Alfie biting another child \u2014 \u201cbetween us, it was a decent bite\u201d \u2014 or her offer to breastfeed Mia\u2019s five-month-old daughter. But it\u2019s when the two go on a boozy night out that things get really weird. Donnelly\u2019s drama is initially fun and daring: a bold comedy thriller, combining the supernatural with the psychological. He weaves together the fears and torments of contemporary daily life \u2014 the noisy neighbours, aggressive strangers on the Tube, partner on night shifts, multiple churning anxieties of parenthood \u2014 with the centuries-old myth of the vampire as a manifestation of what terrifies us. He writes with pithy wit and accuracy about the bone-deep weariness and sleep-starved mindset that can accompany early parenthood and the nagging urge to protect.Mia can\u2019t sleep, kept awake by her tiny daughter and the neighbour\u2019s music, is isolated, exhausted, depleted and emotionally fragile. Her doctor suggests breathing techniques and white noise. Ana suggests a rather different solution. Mia spirals and we are never quite sure, in Blanche McIntyre\u2019s production, what is in her head and what is real (Melville is very good at suggesting wired exhaustion).There are interesting thoughts here about the way physical change can be disorientating and about the way ancient ideas resurface: Mia\u2019s partner Joe (Bryan Dick) is a modern-day vampire hunter, monitoring encrypted online chat forums. Questions, too, about our sense of impotence in the face of global events and how far any of us might go to gain an element of control. Meanwhile the style see-saws between Gothic horror and comedy.But what begins as an unsettling exploration of the porous barrier between internal and external worlds (reflected in Tom Piper\u2019s set of a kitchen surrounded by scaffolding) runs out of road. The play\u2019s supernatural element starts to feel increasingly shaky and the metaphor stretches too thin. Meanwhile the psychological territory becomes too serious for the form: there\u2019s a deeply disturbing twist at the end that doesn\u2019t feel well supported. It\u2019s a bold contemporary reworking of a myth that refuses to die. But in the end, like its protagonist, it bites off more than it can chew.\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606\u2606To April 26, hampsteadtheatre.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Teacher recruitment can be difficult but even so, you\u2019d hope that your child\u2019s primary school might manage to avoid hiring a vampire. No such luck for<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":260037,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-260036","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":260038,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260036\/revisions\/260038"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}