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.

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.

Part of Riverside Studios Bitesize Festival, Fuckboy is a play about gender dysphoria that packs a lot into its 50 minutes.

Written and performed by Freddie Haberfellner, it explores how it feels to navigate a disconnect between one's sense of self and assigned gender through four interweaving timelines in the life of Frankie.

There's a drink-fuelled night out at a club, a tube journey from Aldgate to Richmond carrying a pair of scissors, a fantasy scenario involving Andrew Garfield and therapy sessions.

It has an increasingly frantic pace, flicking between timelines with a blink of a lighting change.

Tube stations tick down, the desire to use the scissors hung ominously within reach above the stage grows, questions become increasingly probing, and a need to have fun while getting increasingly drunk.

Time spent in the fantasy with Andrew Garfield is an amusing place of calm and contentment.

Yet there are constant questions about self, how Frankie feels, their experiences and treatment by others. Where do they fit in when they don't feel at home in their own body, and what does that mean about their place in the world?

REVIEW: George Sand (Léa des Garets), a successful French novelist, has writer's block. It's 1839, and she's both lauded by the press for her work and pilloried for her lifestyle choices. She likes to wear men's suits and has many lovers.

Strapped for cash, she's asked to write a play, so she creates a story about a woman raised as a man called Gabriel by her Grandfather in an attempt to avoid an inheritance going to a distant male relative.

Léa des Garet's play is inspired by the real George Sand, a French writer who sold more books than her male contemporaries, Victor Hugo and Honoré Balzac. She also lived a life that challenged the prescribed norms of French society.

George, the play, has parallel narratives: George, under pressure, writing the play with the help of her actress lover Marie (Iniki Mariano) and Gabriel's story, learning the truth about her upbringing and how she subsequently wants to live her life.

They weave together seamlessly. Léa des Garets also plays Gabriel, and Iniki Mariano takes on the role of Gabriel's male cousin.

Both reflect the prejudices of society towards gender and identity and the hypocrisy at play, particularly when it comes to money. George supports her husband financially, yet she isn't afforded the same rights he has as a man.

A backlash from her agent about Gabriel's ending exposes these prejudices further, and George has to decide whether to compromise what she wants the play to say or consign her work to a draw.

L-R Soroosh Lavasani, Ryan Nolan, Lauren Waine in The Bounds. Photo: Von Fox Promotions

Stewart Pringle's play The Bounds at the Royal Court Theatre upstairs is set in 1553. It's the day of a much-anticipated football game between two rival Northumberland villages.

But this isn't football as we now know it; Tudor football is played over a sprawling area, it's violent, and it lasts as long as it takes for there to be a winner.

Percy (Ryan Nolan) and Rowan (Lauren Waine) are positioned on one of the very outer edges of the game, keeping an eye out for any sign of play coming their way. Then Sam (Saroosh Lavasani) turns up. Neither Percy nor Rowan really know who he is or why he is there. 

In the introduction to the play text, Stewart Pringle describes The Bounds as the most peculiar play he's written, and as it progresses, it becomes evident why.

The opening scene of banter between Percy and Rowan about the previous year's games and what might happen at this one is full of witty lines, but the football game eventually becomes a background accompaniment to other things going on.

In 1553, the boy-king Edward VI was on the throne, and his advisors were instigating a wholesale purging of what was left of Catholicism—finishing what Henry VIII, Edward's father, had started.

We see the impact of this through the attitude of Percy and Rowan to Catholics, particularly when the reality of Protestant landgrabs hits home.

Actor & writer Lea des Garets

Léa des Garets is a queer award-winning actor, writer and theatre-maker from France. Through her company MQT Productions, Léa aims to give more visibility to hidden voices from the past and the present, focusing particularly on international voices, female-led narratives and the LGBTQIA+ community.

Here, she talks to me about George, her new play, which opens at the Omnibus Theatre later this month, playing a writer writing a play and LGBTQ+ representation in theatre. (Scroll to the end for the video)

George is inspired by the story of queer French author George Sand. How did you discover her, and what made you want to write the play?

So I am French, and George Sand is quite well known in France, but in a very limited way. Although she sold more books than Victor Hugo and Honoré Balzac in her time, she isn't nearly as well known as they are today.

At school, I had only studied two of her works, so I wasn't drawn to her literary works. But what I did know was that she dressed as a man, she used a male pen name and allegedly had many lovers.

I had this sense that she was a free woman or expressed her gender in whatever way she wanted, and she was still really, really successful in 19th-century France.

In 2019, I was really exploring my own queerness and craving for figures, not only to study but also to potentially embody as an actor, and I re-stumbled upon her.

In spite of all the press slandering, she still fought for equality and went against the norms, not only in what she represented but also in what she was saying. She really has something to say to our time, so I needed to write about her. And how amazing would it be to play her?

You play George and wrote the play, how does being the playwright inform your performance process, particularly as George in the play is a writer?

I had this image of three circles, there was my world, Léa the writer, and her world, George Sand the writer and the work that she is writing in George the play, which is her play Gabriel.

So much of the writing process of George is included in the play itself. There was a lot of bouncing off ideas with loved ones who are in the industry and who aren't, as well as brainstorming. There was some getting up in the middle of the night to write and also not commanding inspiration but having things come at you from the outside.

But then there is also the tunnel vision for something that you end up being so incredibly passionate about. I really found and experienced that, and I know what it feels like to hold on to what you believe in.

L-R Olivia Dowd, Ishmael Kirby, Jaye Hudson and India JJ. Photo: Harry Elletson

GRILLS at the Camden People's Theatre is set in two time periods and two places connected by the queer experience and history.

Four modern self-professed queer nerds - Vall, Bee, Jaz and Mo - are visiting the Glasgow Women's Library, which is where the archive from the Camden Lesbian Centre and Black Lesbian Group is now kept. 

The CLC and BLG joined forces in the 1980s, and we are transported back to life in their centre through their discoveries while rifling through the archive.

There are revealing snippets from documented phone calls the centre received, which paint a picture of the work the centre did to support queer people. It is a place which created community, support and camaraderie in the face of prejudice and abuse. 

The documents also expose the challenges the centre faced from the politics of the day. Conservative Party rhetoric stoked homophobia, and Section 28 decimated funding for the centre, which was eventually forced to close. Attitudes towards transwomen are also revealed through the internal politics.