Theatre review: Love in Idleness

It's hard to review any show with Eve Best in it and know for sure how good the play itself is. I suspect Love in Idleness is a pretty mediocre play by Terence Rattigan's standards - which still puts it above most, admittedly - but Best's presence elevates it to a thing of pure joy. She plays Olivia, a poor widow whose son was evacuated during World War II and has been living in Canada for the last four years. The War is nearing its end and Michael (Edward Bluemel,) now nearly 18, is returning to London, meaning his mother has to find a way to tell him something she's been putting off: She's been living with a wealthy Canadian industrialist who's also serving as Churchill's cabinet minister for tanks. Sir John Fletcher (Anthony Head) is still married but has separated from his wife and is only holding off on a divorce to spare the Government a scandal; he's promised to marry Olivia once the war is over.

Theatre review: Ticking

TV and film writer Paul Andrew Williams makes his stage debut with Ticking, a play that seems to take inspiration from Michael Wall's 1986 play Amongst Barbarians but then takes its dark theme off into a weirdly domestic direction. Simon (Tom Hughes) is a middle-class Englishman in his twenties who's been found guilty of murdering a prostitute in China. He's always protested his innocence but after four years in a Chinese prison he faces execution by firing squad at midnight. With a few hours to go and his American lawyer (David Michaels) desperately trying to get a last-minute reprieve, Simon's parents (Anthony Head and Niamh Cusack) arrive to spend a final hour with their son. They find him angry and frustrated, unsurprisingly, but instead of his captors his anger seems to be directed at them, and especially his father.