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.

Julia McDermott in Weather Girl. Credit: Pamela Raith Photography

The character in Brian Watkins' monologue play Weather Girl is called Stacey (Julia McDermott) which was slightly disconcerting because that's my real name (Stan is a nickname), and it's not the sort of name usually used for stage characters.

But, the fact that it is disconcerting is appropriate, Weather Girl is a disconcerting dichotomy of a play.

Stacey is a California weather girl who has to get up at 4am and be cheery while wild fires are wrecking homes and lives around her. 

In the studio, she is all smiles, quips and glamour, but outside, she is keeping an eye on her homeless, drug-addict mom, who has forgotten who she is. Stacey always sips from a large, fancy water bottle, except it actually contains prosecco.

When she is offered a 'promotion' in desert-city Phoenix, it tips her over the edge, and her life spirals into a car crash - figuratively and literally.

Jamie Bisping, Sara Hazemi, Paul Thornley and Ruby Stokes in The Habits, Hampstead Theatre. Photo: Genevieve Girling

The Habits is set in a board game cafe where Jess (Ruby Stokes), Maryn (Sara Hazemi) and Milo (Jamie Bisping) meet to escape into a world of Dungeons & Dragons dwarfs, wizards and the mysterious Nightmare King.

Cafe owner Dennis (Paul Thornley) is also running away from something, and it's not just the fact that everyone else is playing Monopoly.

But real life is knocking against the door of their created fantasy landscape. It's there in the banter and bickering about Brexit, politics and gender, which influences how they treat other characters in the game.

There is also the real life that is closer to home that tumbles into the game through their conversations and phone call interruptions: the stressful job, the reluctance to commit to anything and the raw grief.

The stage is set up 'in the round' with just a table and chairs in the middle. Knowing the game-playing setting, I was a little worried at the start that the characters might spend a lot of their time sitting with their back to chunks of the audience. 

Shalisha James-Davis, David Shields and Emma Pallant in Punch. Photo: Marc Brenner

Jacob Dunne (David Shields) is an unruly youth from 'The Meadows' in Nottingham, an experimentally-designed, 1970s council estate that has created rat runs of dark alley for youths to play or move around undetected.

It's described as like being in a live video game by Jacob, and is a place with two paths: keep your head down or drugs and gangs. Struggling in school and seeing no future prospects, he chooses the latter, using his fists to maintain status within his friendship group. 

A good night out is drink, drugs and a fight until, with just one punch, tragedy strikes.

What life could or should Jacob have after he has killed James Hodgkinson, a young man out for a drink with his dad after watching the cricket? Besides a short prison sentence, what justice is there for James's parents, Joan (Julia Hesmondhalgh) and David (Tony Hirst)?

James Graham's play, Punch, is based on Jacob Dunne's book Right From Wrong and was originally produced for Nottingham Playhouse.

The fast-paced first half uses clever lighting by Robbie Butler and movement by Leanne Pinder to transport us into the world of Jacob - school, estate, church, pub, clubs and home with his despairing mum (Emma Pallant).

A more contemplative second half carries punches of a different sort. This isn't about retaliation for the loss of an innocent life but taking a much more challenging but ultimately more fulfilling conciliatory path.

Actor and writer Jack Holden had a huge hit with Cruise in 2022, and I think he might have done it again with Kenrex, which has transferred to the Southwark Playhouse from Sheffield.

Based on a true story in the small isolated town of Skidmore, Missouri, Ken Rex McElroy is a piece of work. He's a dangerous bully, sensitive to any slight, and engages in a menu of criminal behaviour: theft, intimidation, abduction and statutory rape among his indictments.

And yet, despite being hauled in front of the justice system 21 times, with the help of a clever lawyer and targeted threats, he always manages to get off.

Then, one day, he shoots the local greengrocer over a petty argument and it pushes the community over the edge.

Kenrex is a play of successful, skilful layers that combine to make something extraordinary. It's a gripping thriller of a story brought vividly to life by Jack Holden and musician John Patrick Elliot.

Jack Holden plays all the characters transforming in a blink with just a change of stance and voice. He transports you to Skidmore, painting a colourful picture of the town and the events from that fateful time with descriptions, radio broadcasts, phone calls, interrogations, and reenactments of key moments.

Lynn Faces, New Diorama. Photo Dom Moore

The opening song of the newly formed, chronically under-rehearsed punk band Lynn Faces is called Snazzy Cardigan. While not exactly a punk theme, it's conversely more because it subverts the genre stereotype. 

Lynn Faces, the play (with songs), is also punk in that it's about a woman attempting to break away from a toxic relationship. Rather than 'smash the Government', band founder Leah (Madeleine MacMahon) is learning to break away from her coercive, controlling boyfriend Pete. 

The play is set on stage during the band's first gig, where they start off wearing masks of the face of Lynn from Alan Partridge. Lynn, to Leah, is a symbol of someone who has more going on beneath the surface if only given a chance. 

Between the songs with their wonky timing and strange array of percussion instruments played by Shonagh (Millie Faraway), there is bickering and arguments about what to play next, unplanned 'crowd work' fillers and storming off to make angry phone calls.

The story of how and why the band formed is revealed, and tension slowly builds as Leah looks in danger of being sucked back into the toxic Pete loop, much to the exasperation of friend and keyboard player Ali (Peyvand Sadeghian).

Nikolay Mulakov in Vanya is Alive at Omnibus Theatre 5. Photo: Sergey Novikov

Alya is the mother of a soldier. Her son is alive and free. This is what she is told. This is what we are told via performer Nikolay Mulakov.

We are not told it's set in modern-day Russia, but it clearly is. We are also not told that Vanya is, in fact, dead, but it quickly becomes clear that this is the case.

The story is a tangle of lies from which to unpick the truth; the easier path is to believe the lie. Is that how it happens? Is that how lies become the truth?

Nikolay Mulakov's performance is stripped back, quiet and mostly still. It draws you straight to the words, to imagining Alya's story.  We hear about her encounters with her neighbour, a shop assistant and others in the unidentified town or city where she lives.

Santi (Aiyana Bartlett & Naz (Farah Ashraf). Photo: Paul Blakemore

Santi & Naz at Soho Theatre is a teenage friendship story set against the backdrop of the run-up to Partition.

Santi (Aiyana Bartlett) is Sikh, loves books and has eyes for a young man in the village who may not be what she thinks he is. Naz (Farah Ashraf) is Muslin, less studious and bolder, but facing an unwelcome arranged marriage with a handsy man.

They are very close, tease each other and support each other. They have their own language and made-up games, but they are also on the path of discovery with new feelings to contend with, all while the outside world is starting to penetrate their innocent bubble.

Written by Guleraana Mir and afshan d'souza-lodhi, the script is textured in Indian culture and vividly transports you from a dark January evening in London.

Olivia Darnley, Mimî M Khayisa, Sifiso Mazibuko, Scott Sparrow in A Good House, Royal Court Theatre. Photo: Camilla Greenwell

Thought-provoking, challenging and funny in a play is a difficult combination to get right, but the production of Amy Jeptha's play A Good House at the Royal Court Theatre does just that.

Bonolo (Mimi M Khayisa) and Sihle (Sifiso Mazibuko) are relatively new to the neighbourhood of Stillwater when a mysterious shack appears on a vacant plot with no sign of its inhabitants.

The couple are befriended by their neighbours Lynette (Olivia Darnley) and Chris (Scott Sparrow) to be the face of a campaign to get it removed. Awkwardly polite negotiations about what they should do begin over mature brie and good vintage red wine.

Changing wall hangings, sofa positions and cushions represent the different living rooms in this smart, affluent enclave.

First, it is the homes of Banolo and Sihle and Lynette and Scott, but then we meet young couple Jess (Robyn Rainsford) and Andrew (Kai Luke Brummer), whose house looks out onto the shack.

Their gatherings to discuss what the shack means for the neighbourhood and what they should do expose assumptions, resentments and prejudices around race and social status - particularly when it comes to housing. It raises questions about fitting in, authenticity and how far you should go to assimilate.

Reykjavik, Hampstead Theatre. Photo: Mark Douet

Richard Bean's new play Reykjavik at the Hampstead Theatre is set in the 1970s among a community of Hull-based trawler fishing men.

It is hard and dangerous work, taking the men away for three weeks at a time as they head further and further into potentially dangerous waters to find fish.

Boats returning without a good catch risk big losses for the owner of the company, Donald Claxton (John Hollingworth), and potentially the sack for the skipper.

But tragedy strikes and one of Claxton's boats sinks in freezing seas off Iceland, resulting in the death of 15 crew. Donald goes from being the disliked "capitalist" boss to being hated by those he employs and their families.

The first half is set in Donald Claxton's dim, solid, dark wood-furnished warehouse office (set design by Anna Reid), where interactions with a string of visitors reveal more of the boss and life in the community.

While Claxton is a businessman, he isn't without heart and respects the traditions built up around tragedies of this sort.

The community is like any other in its mix of relationships and gossip, and long stretches away at sea suit some families and workers more than others. Their's is an inherent practicality in their approach to life and work, but it is wrapped in a thin veil of superstition and myth. 

This is something that gets explored in the second half of the play, which is set in a hotel in Reykjavik where four survivors from the sunken ship are holed up before they get a boat home.

Claxton flies out to meet them, and with visible tensions, they settle in for a night of drinking and storytelling to pass the time.