Theatre review: Labyrinth

Playwright Beth Steel seems to like titles reminiscent of kids' classics: Much as her Wonderland featured miners at the bottom of the tunnel rather than a white rabbit, her Labyrinth offers up bankers instead of David Bowie and muppets. In fact the reference that most often came to mind was Lucy Prebble's ENRON, as Labyrinth too aims to illustrate more recent financial collapse through the story of a historical one - in this case the late 1970s / early 1980s mountain of debt that crippled South America. Hampstead Theatre have brought back their recent discover Sean Delaney and put a whole show on his shoulders as John, son of a fraudster and determined to make a fortune in a more reputable way himself. He's taken on by a bank that specialises in making loans to foreign governments, and learns from Alpha male Charlie (Tom Weston-Jones) how the world is run on behind-the-scenes handshake deals.

Theatre review: Pine

If Pine was 20 minutes shorter, it would be a pretty much perfect show. While Hampstead Theatre's main house doesn't tend to do a Christmas production, the Downstairs studio has made its own tradition of programming a twisted version of a festive special. We've had disastrous office parties and dysfunctional family reunions, and this year Jacqui Honess-Martin's play takes us to a large lot selling Christmas trees - not a cheap outfit on a street corner but part of a chain selling quality trees for up to £150 apiece (Polly Sullivan's design makes the audience rows of trees on sale, into which the characters can disappear to work or get off with each other.) The temporary workers there must be well-paid too, as they tend to return year after year. A graduate and aspiring journalist, Gabby (Hannah Britland) is there for the fourth year running as her career goals haven't worked out. She'll be joining her boyfriend in Germany in the New Year but for her last December at Festive Pines her boss Sami (David Mumeni) has chosen to make her manager of this particular outlet.

Theatre review: We Know Where You Live

Steven Hevey's We Know Where You Live first turned up at the Finborough as one of the rehearsed readings in 2013's Vibrant season, but its return for a full staging couldn't have been better timed, as the hipsters of East London fret that a new Pret A Manger might destroy a local history that stretches back as far as four whole years into the distant past. The play's central character, Ben (Matt Whitchurch) isn't quite as irony-deficient as that, but he still finds himself at odds with seemingly everyone about how important the history of his little corner of London is. Because in another of this year's plays looking at the spiraling cost of housing, this one focuses particularly on gentrification: Architect Ben and his fabric designer girlfriend Asma (Ritu Arya) can't find anywhere they can afford, until a ground-floor flat in an unnamed Hackney neighbourhood becomes available - and even then Asma's wealthy father needs to chip in with the rent.