Video transcript:

Krapp's Last Tape, starring Gary Oldman, at the York Theatre Royal, is a tiny, 50-minute play.

Was it worth spending two hours on the train to get up there?

Well, it's the story of a man looking back over his life, and he's doing this by listening to recordings that he made of him talking about his life when he was younger.

And it's a very reflective piece. It's a piece that is a real test for the actor that's playing the role.

There isn't a massive amount of dialogue. Obviously, they're acting alongside tape recording, so it's a lot of reactions, and it would be easy to overreact and do a lot, move around, move and do stuff. 

Victoria Smurfit and Callum Scott Howells in Ghosts, Lyric Hammersmith. Photo: Helen Murray

Gary Owen's new version of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts gives the play a contemporary setting, in a rural west country seaside location where low cloud ironically blocks the view from the large panoramic windows of Helena Alving's (Victoria Smurfit) minimalist lounge.

Story details have also been given a modern twist.

The orphanage Helena is building to honour her late husband in Ibsen's play is now a children's hospital. Jacob (Deka Walmsley) wants his daughter, Reggie (Patricia Allison) to leave Helena's employment and help him set up a holiday home renovation business rather than open a hotel for retired sailors. And syphilis becomes depression and anxiety.

Pastor Manders becomes Anderson (Rhashan Stone), a lawyer working for the charitable trust which will run the hospital. He's also an old flame of Helena's from before she married. Oswald or 'Oz' her son (Callum Scott Howells) is an actor rather than an artist whose career is currently on a down.

The script is contemporary and, particularly in the first half, witty with plenty of humorous lines. 

However, it is the relationships where this version of Ghosts feels the most 'now'.

Kedar Williams-Stirling and Keelan Kember in Thanks For Having Me, Riverside Studios. Photo: Oliver Kember

Young love and lust and what it means to be in a relationship are the themes in actor/writer Keelan Kember's new comedy play Thanks For Having Me.

Cashel (Kember) interrupts his friend Honey's (Kedar Williams-Stirling) attempts to get his date Maya (Adeyinka Akinrinade) into bed when he turns up heartbroken, having just split up from his girlfriend.

Honey is confident around women and has his signature routine for getting his dates to sleep with him, which involves pretending he doesn't do that sort of thing, but he can't commit and never sees anyone more than a few times.

Cashel is a neurotic overthinker who falls sickeningly in love but is loyal.

Honey can't let go of control and be vulnerable, and Cashel can't temper his emotions; he doesn't have much of a filter.

Jab, Park Theatre. Photo: Steve Gregson

Five years on from the start of COVID, that time seems both like another life and yet sharply familiar in James McDermott's play Jab.

It's long enough ago that we can at least laugh about it. Boris Johnson's gaffs, dodgy haircuts and Barnard Castle all become amusing quips.

But it's recent enough to still capture the fear and divide: The rising death toll, lockdown challenges and the safety of the vaccine.

Jab is COVID told through a domestic lens. Anne (Kacey Ainsworth) works for the NHS, and her husband Don (Liam Tobin) has a shop that doesn’t make any money and is more of a hobby than a business.

Their kids have grown up and flown the nest, and they are generally content. They laugh together, playfully poke fun and occasionally dance around the living room. 

But the extraordinary situation puts pressure on their relationship heightening long standing niggles into bigger grievances.

Anne is the breadwinner. Don doesn’t do much now that his shop's closed, and that’s a source of tension, as is Don's sexual appetite and Anne's lack thereof.

Performed with a mix of finally tuned rapport and tension between Kacey Ainsworth and Liam Tobin, bickering turns into barbs, arguments into rows, particularly when Don's attitude towards vaccines is factored in. It becomes a primary source of divide - and drama.