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# Review: Solomon and Marion @ Birmingham Rep
- URL: https://lichfieldlive.co.uk/review-solomon-and-marion-birmingham-rep/
- Published: 2014-10-27T09:01:29.000Z
- Updated: 2014-10-27T11:05:27.000Z
- Author: Phil Preece
- Tags: Reviews, What's On, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-07-22 20:48

[![Solomon and Marion. Pic: Ruphin Coudyzer](https://storage.ghost.io/c/e3/90/e390c3da-0866-4d2a-8ffe-ca4999d7ce1c/content/images/lichfieldlive-co-uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/janet-suzman-and-khayalethu-anthony-in-solomon-and-marion-pic-2-by-ruphin-coudyzer.jpg)](//lichfieldlive.co.uk/2014/10/27/review-solomon-and-marion-birmingham-rep/janet-suzman-and-khayalethu-anthony-in-solomon-and-marion-pic-2-by-ruphin-coudyzer/)

Solomon and Marion. Pic: Ruphin Coudyzer

The Rep Studio is fast becoming one of my favourite small theatre spaces in the midlands and its latest production confirms this view bigtime. Because with Solomon and Marion it’s hosting an intriguing miniature masterpiece, a subtle seventy five minutes of first class edge of the seat theatre.

Lara Foot’s two-hander has a deceptively simple premise – an elderly English woman living alone in post-Mandela South Africa receives a visitor, a young black man who is the son of her past servant. Is he a friend, or a potential threat looking to rob or worse?

Instead he brings gifts, and in the course of three short acts we see the relationship between these two, products of very different cultures, form and reform as they challenge and change each other. But what may seem a clever metaphor for post-apartheid harmony or its reverse keeps the audience guessing right until the very end of this sophisticated, very funny and deeply moving play.

The legendary Janet Suzman (the programme biography modestly omits her 2011 Damehood for services to drama). gives a master class in the subtle art of proper acting, Yet she is more than matched by the protean, chameleon-like Khayalethu Anthony as the township boy who at first offers crumbs of companionship but who finally poses a conundrum with no simple solution.

A magnificent evening all round.

Solomon and Marion runs in the Rep Studio until November 1\. For tickets go online at [Birmingham-rep.co.uk](http://birmingham-rep.co.uk/?ref=lichfieldlive.co.uk) or phone the box office on 0121 236 4455.