Young Vic theatre, London
A powerful blend of mixed reality, testimony and theatre exposes the human toll of benefit cuts – and asks what justice looks like in a new political era

David Cameron did not just leave us the gift of Brexit before fleeing his premiership. There is also the toxic legacy of his “age of austerity” policies. Here is an excoriating production that examines what austerity meant for those targeted by it. They include some of the most vulnerable members of society – people who were abused, destitute, disabled, mentally ill and jobless (what was it that Pearl Buck said about the test of a civilisation?).

The show is based on the lives of people who were denied welfare benefits and died. Directed by Sacha Wares, it is an installation that combines promenade theatre with holograms. Wearing a mixed-reality (MR) headset, you enter a room where eight static figures emerge, played by actors. They lie on gurneys, bare mattresses, park benches, pavements and soiled duvets, and make for a woeful army of “invisibles” who have, for this time, come into our line of vision. We hear their stories, told by relatives (interviews co-edited by Wares and special advisor John Pring) and the accounts bring tears to your eyes.

Young Vic theatre, London
Rajiv Joseph’s tale of a captive animal that returns from the dead after the 2003 invasion is bracingly unconventional

There is an exciting wildness to the European premiere of Rajiv Joseph’s surreal black comedy about the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. Firstly, an animal is played on stage, a tiger shot in a Baghdad zoo that returns from the dead to haunt the US marine who pulled the trigger. Secondly, it talks. Wisecracks, in fact, and interrogates the existence of God. A twisted version of Life of Pi? Certainly it’s less of a dream than a nightmare in which anything could happen.

And things do lurch from one thing to another with illogical effect. To add to the frisson of unpredictability, Kathryn Hunter performs as the tiger after David Threlfall bowed out, until further notice, due to illness. The part was played on Broadway in 2011 by Robin Williams but Hunter brings her own comic swagger.