Firstnight This beautifully tailored 1970s treatwears just as well today

One of the weird things about the- atre is that most plays have an initial run, then they’re never seen again. It’s an art form with a short memory. Watch- ing this revival of Alterations by Michael Abbensetts, rediscovered as part of the Black Plays Archive at the National Theatre, you do wonder how many other great pieces of writing are gathering dust somewhere.

- TIM BANO

Even though it’s 47 years old, it couldn't be less dusty, certainly not the way director Lynette Linton and addi- tional writer Trish Cooke treat it. Col- our, music, motion, loads of laughter: the whole thing feels completely alive from its first moment.

It plays out like a sitcom episode: Walker Holt (Arinzé Kene) is a Guyanese tailor desperate to own his own shop in London. If he can alter a huge batch of trousers in one night, he'll get enough money to buy the lease. But his wife is annoyed at him, his assistant is use- less, and the race against time becomes a reckoning.

Without ever letting the humour drop, Abbensetts explores what success and ambition can look like for Walker in a society that’s stacked against him — ie deeply racist.