Theatre review: Cow | Deer

Katie Mitchell has been noticing that Foley art is a thing that exists, and building shows around it, on and off for years now. To be honest I probably wouldn't have booked Cow Vertical Bar Deer, which Mitchell co-creates with Nina Segal and Melanie Wilson, if it hadn't been a co-production with the National Theatre of Greece and I'd not felt like being supportive. In the end it's not quite my cup of tea but didn't feel like a waste of my time either. The show is entirely wordless, with the cast of four responding to Wilson's pre-recorded soundtrack of animal and machine noises by using Foley techniques to create the rest of the sounds heard by the titular animals: A heavily pregnant cow in a field, and in a nearby wood a deer, whose levels of fecundity the informational postcard we're given at the start doesn't disclose.

Theatre review: The Victorian in the Wall

Will Adamsdale's The Victorian in the Wall is at the Royal Court Upstairs in a limbo period between Artistic Directors (although presumably someone had to OK its run?) and has for me an element of déjà vu as I saw a work-in-progress version of the show 18 months ago, as part of the Rough Cuts programme. Guy (Adamsdale) is a writer - or at least, he wrote an award-winning short story in the late '90s. What he actually does best is procrastinate, at the moment over a CBeebies script he's meant to be writing (he's stumped on the characters' motivation.) His long-term girlfriend Fi (Melanie Wilson) has a much more grown-up job (so much so that Guy has no idea what she actually does.) She's also the one who's organised the building works due to take place as the couple gentrify their Victorian East London flat.