Theatre review: The Flouers o'Edinburgh

The Finborough is, surprisingly enough, the only London theatre to be marking the upcoming independence referendum in Scotland. It does so with the mini-season Scotland Decides/Tha Alba a'taghadh 2014, which has as its centrepiece a comic look at the social consequences of merging two nations who'd spent much of their history at war. First seen in 1948, Robert McLellan's The Flouers o'Edinburgh is set among the noble, if not as well-off as they used to be, denizens of Georgian Edinburgh. Girzie (Jenny Lee) has lost her lands and fortune, but finds solace in fiery niece Kate (Leigh Lothian.) Forbidding herself from marrying her good friend Sir Charles (Kevin McMonagle) until her brother returns from the army, Girzie puts her efforts intsead into finding a husband and stability for Kate. Sir Charles' son seems a perfect candidate, as he and Kate were good friends as children.

Theatre review: Armstrong's War

There's not much need to adapt the hospital set from As Is for the Finborough's alternate show this month, as Colleen Murphy's Armstrong's War also features someone ill - although this time there's more chance of recovery, physically at least. Michael (Mark Quartley) is a Canadian soldier recovering from a bomb injury. Between physiotherapy sessions he's pretty much left forgotten in his room, so he's agreed to let a girl guide read to him once a week so she can earn a merit badge. It's a decision he quickly regrets when wheelchair-bound 12-year-old Halley (Jessica Barden) wheels into his room, an onslaught of perkiness reading from her favourite "girl detective" novel to a man who's happiest hiding under the bed, and who occasionally stops to have a chat into thin air with an old army buddy he lost in Afghanistan.