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.

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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.