Threadbare Theatre's Offroading, Old Red Lion Theatre

Offroading at the Old Red Lion is an opposites-attract comedy-drama in which the couple's relationship and their imagined futures are tested.

Writer Lucy Linger tells the story through the eyes of Steve (Owen Frost), who recounts his memories of meeting and falling in love with Jane (Elise Verney).

Steve is steady, middle-of-the-road, plodding contentedly through life. He is still in his graduate job after 10 years and still living with his parents. Jane blows like a whirlwind into his life; she is free-spirited, impulsive, bohemian and doesn't like to lay down roots.

Their awkward first meeting is in a pub. Steve is nervously waiting for his blind date to show up and mistakes Jane for the person he is meeting.

It's a slow-burn relationship, frustratingly so for Steve who has been enamoured with Jane pretty much from the start.

But despite their differences and a few bumps, it seems to work. That is until they face a bigger challenge, which throws their differences into stark relief. It turns their differences from quirks to irks and throws into question the paths they see themselves on.

Owen Frost's Steve regularly talks directly to the audience, giving his impressions of the relationship and commentary that comes with the benefit of hindsight.

The two actors spark in their scenes together, convincing as a mismatched couple. The first half bobs along, buoyed by plenty of light humour and wit.

Country music is cool, and it's going to launch 17-year-old Conor (Harry Evans) into a glittering career as a backing dancer in the US or winning a talent competition in his hometown of Croydon will.

That's the premise of Hugo Timbrell's play My Life As a Cowboy, which has just opened at the Omnibus Theatre in Clapham.

Conor is living an average suburban life. He works as a lifeguard at the local leisure centre and is generally cheerful and optimistic but worries that he might be a loser.

His best friend, Zainab (Nusrath Tapadar), reluctantly agrees to help him with his dance routine for the competition and join him in performing.

Zainab is spirited, sharp and kind, but tensions flare when their duo becomes a trio as Conor swaps the chosen Shania Twain song for fellow lifeguard Michael's self-penned country song about...being a lifeguard.

Michael isn't the sharpest person and is not always the most considerate of others.

The action switches deftly back and forth between rehearsals in Conor's bedroom to the poolside chats with Michael and later to Croydon Town Hall for the auditions and performance.

The Fifth Step promotional poster, Dundee Rep

David Ireland’s new play The Fifth Step had its first performance with a packed house at the Dundee Rep before transferring for a short run in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

It's a different play tonally to Ulster American (which I was ‘meh about) and Cyprus Avenue, which was grim, shocking (and excellent).

While not shying away from difficult topics, it feels 'relatively' gentler - for Ireland, anyway.

The fifth step refers to the Alcoholics Anonymous recovery stage, whereby wrongs, things you are ashamed of, are confessed to another, having drawn up your list as the fourth step.

The play opens with Luka (Jack Lowden) choosing James (Sean Gilder) as his sponsor. Well, it opens with a typically frank conversation that centres on James’ own sponsor, who was gay and whether gay men inevitably fancy all men.

(Luka thinks so based on his own thoughts about women and sex.)

He is struggling with the adjustment to 100% abstention from alcohol. His social life centres on pubs, and his friends aren't very supportive. He doesn't have a job, and when he’s not trying to get work, he spends his time watching porn and ‘relieving himself’.

He relieves himself rather a lot.

Heather Agyepong (Des) Tosin Cole (Dre) in Shifters, Duke of York's Theatre. Photo: Marc Brenner

Shifters is the latest play to transfer from London's fertile fringe theatre scene into the West End. I didn't manage to see it when it premiered at the Bush Theatre, so I was grateful for the second chance to catch it at the Duke of York's Theatre.

To describe Shifters as a love story is to oversimplify its premise.

It is a story about the complex love and relationship between Des (Heather Agyepong) and Dre (Tosin Cole). They meet while sixth formers and subsequently disappear and reappear in each other's lives as they pursue their chosen careers, run from the past and cling to it.

The play starts with the grown-up Dre at his grandmother's funeral. He was close to his grandmother, and Des has unexpectedly flown in for the occasion, albeit arriving very late due to travel delays.

Their awkward, casual greeting becomes a trope that is revisited as the narrative flits back and forth, filling in the gaps in their relationship over the intervening years. Lighting changes help to denote different time points, as the two pop up in each others lives and reconnect.

They replay and avoid past events with equal measure.

Shifters' writer, Benedict Lombe, is skilled with naturalistic dialogue. Her words are brought bursting off the page in crackles and ripples by Heather Agyepong and Tosin Cole.

Benedict Lombe peppers the sparky conversation with poetic monologues, delivered to the audience, that add layers of insight into what each is thinking and feeling.

Julius D'Silva, Archie Backhouse, Forbes Masson, Alan Cox, Daniel Boyd and David Yelland in Farm Hall, Theatre Royal Haymarket - Photo: Alex Brenner

Last year saw two plays in London based on the real story of a group of Germany's top scientists who were rounded up at the end of the Second World War and held at a farm outside Cambridge.

One was Operation Epsilon at Southwark Playhouse Elephant and the other was Farm Hall at Jermyn Street Theatre which has now transferred to the Theatre Royal Haymarket.

Think of Farm Hall as sort of like a Big Brother house for physicists who had been trying to develop an atomic bomb. They can wander around the house, but the British and Americans are listening, having bugged the farm to discover how close the Germans got in their work.

While Operation Epsilon included all 10 scientists, Farm Hall focuses on six and is better for it as you get to know them a little more.

The scientists are bored, making their own entertainment with the books and games that are available.

They bicker and argue with a few witty lines about the English thrown in for good measure. They speculate about their fate and fantasise about their future and where they'd like to settle.

Not all get along; there is snobbery about the types of work they were doing and arguments about the Nazis and individual relationships with the party.

It is amusing and interesting but a little plodding. However, at the end of the first half, they are told about the Hiroshima bomb, and things change.

One of the scientists, Otto Hahn (Forbes Masson), had given the Germans a head start when he discovered nuclear fission. The consequences of that discovery haunt him.

The play becomes a debate about the morality of their work, its real-world impact, and how it makes them feel.

For some, old rivalries and competitiveness bubble to the surface, while for others, reconciling what they could have done—the 'what ifs'—is more difficult.

At one point, they discuss where Germany would have targeted had it succeeded in developing the atomic bomb first.

These discussions display a mix of cold science and feelings (or lack thereof in some instances).

Farm Hall has good all-round performances and is well-directed by Stephen Unwin, who manages to bring enough activity to what could otherwise be a very static play.

But it is slow to get started and does not really hit its stride until the second half. I'm giving it ⭐️⭐️⭐️ and a half stars.

Farm Hall, Theatre Royal Haymarket

Written by Katherine Moar

Directed by Stephen Unwin

Cast: Daniel Boyd, David Yelland, Alan Cox, Julius D'Silva, Archie Backhouse and Forbes Masson

Running time: 1 hour and 45 minutes, including an interval

Booking until 31 August; visit the official website for more details and to buy tickets.

Recently reviewed

When It Happens To You, Park Theatre ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ booking until 31 August

Wormholes, Omnibus Theatre ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ booking until 10 August

The Constituent, Old Vic Theatre ⭐️⭐️ ⭐️ booking until 10 August.

When It Happens to You at the Park Theatre. Photo by Mark Douet. L-r Amanda Abbington and Rosie Day

The 'it' in When It Happens To You at the Park Theatre is revealed with a horrific punch in the play's opening moments. It's 3am, and Tara (Amanda Abbington) is woken up by her mobile. It's her daughter Esme (Rosie Day), who lives hours away in New York.

I'm deliberately not saying what 'it' is as that detail is not mentioned in the play description. One of the themes is the difficulty in saying the specific word and how hard it is for people to talk about it generally.

The play is written by Tawni O'Dell, who has drawn on her own experiences and focuses on the immediate and longer-term aftermath of the events of that night for Tara, Esme, and her brother Connor (Miles Molan).

There isn't the expected closure when criminal proceedings draw to their conclusion. Esme says she doesn't want to be defined by what happened, yet the event of that night subsequently defines each member of the family unit and their formally strong relationship is shattered.

It's a horror that lives on as they try to come to terms with it, and it's made all the more heart-wrenching by watching their inability to comfort each other. They just don't know how.

Victoria Yeates in Wormholes, Omnibus Theatre. Photo: R Greig

There's a bitter irony when the Woman (Victoria Yeates) talks about the world being a better place in the opening scene of Wormholes at the Omnibus Theatre. She lists the almost complete eradication of the Guinea Worm as part of the evidence.

But the irony only becomes truly apparent as her story unfolds. The Guinea Worm, which lives and slowly grows inside its human host for a long time before it painfully emerges, is a metaphor for the coercive relationship she ends up in.

We first see the Woman in a psychiatric hospital, talking about her fellow patients and recounting her story from the fun first date and the slow, insidious infiltration of control over every aspect of her life.

In the introduction to the play text, writer Emily Jupp says it was important that the Woman represented an 'everywoman' to demonstrate that these experiences aren't restricted to a type.

The Woman in the play has a strong group of friends, is bubbly, enjoys life, has a good job and, unlike some of her friends, is not particularly looking for a relationship.

Covered in a blue rubbery material, the stage has an institutional feel. There is nothing else, it is just Victoria Yates and the space. She also plays 'Him', the Woman's mother and her best friend Jess.

While you see everything from the Woman's perspective, the presence of both mother and friend demonstrates how the outward appearance of a relationship can be so deceptive. It raises important questions: Would you spot the signs if it happened to your friend? What would you do if you did? What could you do?

Knives and Forks is part of the Riverside Studios Bitesize Festival and tells the story of female friendship in challenging circumstances.

Iris (Ianthe Bathurst) and Thalia (Thea Mayeux) met at university and now share a flat. They laugh, reminisce, and bicker in a relationship firmly cemented by the unique love great friends have.

But their friendship is tested when one of them gets ill.

Iris and Thalia are also represented on stage by their 'psyches' played by India Walton and Chien-Hui Yen, respectively, who dress identically to their counterparts.

They don't say anything but are a constant presence. They dance alone, in sequence and together, sometimes mimicking the speaking actors sometimes not.

The psyches also draw and write on the white paper backdrop to the stage. There is also a chalkboard where they scribble dates representing the story's non-linear timeline.

We see the impact on Iris and Thalia's friendship and on each of the friends from the illness and secrets that surround it. There is love, fear and anger, mistakes and regrets of things done and not done.

It is powerful stuff, but it could be more powerful if it was stripped back.

It's been a bit of a build-up to seeing Alma Mater at the Almeida Theatre. Twice performances we booked were cancelled, and tickets had to be rearranged.

So it was a relief to finally sit in the theatre watching it on a third attempt.

There has been a cast change; Justine Mitchell has taken over the role of Jo from Lia Williams, who had to pull out due to ill health.

With so little rehearsal time, Justine Mitchell still had her script in hand when I saw it, but her performance was such that I barely noticed. She plays an ex-journalist, feminist campaigner and now master of an esteemed college steeped in tradition and history.

When fresher Paige (Liv Hill) confides in student Nikki (Phoebe Campbell) that she was sexually assaulted, Nikki decides to take up the cause and turns to Jo.

But when Jo doesn't give Nikki the answers she wants, battle lines are drawn.

Kendall Feaver's play is knotty; there are no simple answers or straightforward characters.

Natalie Simpson as Marianne and James Corrigan as Stefan. Photo: Marc Brenner

It's curious that the play description on the Hampstead Theatre website for Visit From An Unknown Woman focuses on the male character, Stefan, played by James Corrigan, while the story firmly revolves around the mysterious Marianne (Natalie Simpson).

Based on a short story by Stefan Zweig and adapted for the stage by Christopher Hampton, the 1930s Vienna-set play opens with Stefan arriving at his sparse apartment with a woman he's just picked up at a nightclub.

Or at least he thinks he just picked her up. Marianne, it seems, is more familiar with Stefan than he is with her. The clue is in the younger version of Marianne (Jessie Gattward), who haunts the edges of the stage.

The source short story is a letter Marianne writes to Stefan, a successful novelist and her former neighbour.

In the play, she has the majority of the dialogue, which means that Marianne becomes the main conduit through which we learn about Stefan and how her life is linked to his. 

A childhood crush on him has developed into an obsession in adult life. She's been a keen observer/stalker of him ever since, to the point where she understands him probably better than he understands himself.