Theatre review: Summerfolk

Maxim Gorky's Summerfolk was written in 1904, the year Anton Chekhov died; Nina Raine and Moses Raine's new version for the National moves the action to one year later, possibly so that the characters can make reference to his death, and the obvious comparisons to Gorky's playwrighting contemporary aren't left to be the elephant in the room. Because this all feels very familiar: A large group of well-off Russians (in this case explicitly said to be self-made, nouveau-riche) are on their annual extended summer holiday at a dacha. Some are related: The house belongs to Varvara (Sophie Rundle) and her laywer husband Sergei Bassov (Paul Ready,) while her brother Vlass (Alex Lawther) is nominally Sergei's clerk, but in practice seems to be there mainly to moon over an older woman, the doctor Maria Lvovna (Justine Mitchell.)

Theatre review: The Jungle

I originally had a ticket to see Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson's The Jungle at the Young Vic last year, but was too ill to go. But in the welcome recent trend of acclaimed shows that don't necessarily look like instant commercial smashes getting a West End transfer, I got a second chance as it's moved to the Playhouse for a summer run. And in many ways I was glad to have seen it here instead, because while it's not unusual to see the Young Vic host an immersive staging, there's something particularly impressive about Miriam Buether's design transforming a Victorian West End proscenium arch into the makeshift Calais refugee camp that was always in the news a few years ago. Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin's production starts at the end, with the French authorities evicting everyone and bulldozing the camp, before going back to the beginning.

Theatre review: The Glass Supper

It's a common storytelling setup to have a seemingly happy domestic situation reveal its demons when unexpected guests intrude, but they don't always explode in quite such a surreal way as this: In The Glass Supper, Marcus (Michael Begley) and Colin (Owen Sharpe) appear on the surface to be the picture of a "respectable" gay couple. Together for 20 years and recently married, they've moved from London to a remote cottage where writer Marcus can work in peace, and the two of them can - at least in theory - give up smoking, drink and drugs. There's some tension in the air as Colin has so far failed to quit any of them, but it's nothing compared to what happens when a couple they met the year before on a gay cruise (of the ocean liner variety) turn up on their doorstep on the way to this year's holiday.

Theatre review: Fault Lines

An office-based comedy can be a good vehicle for shining a light on the kinds of jobs everyone knows someone must have to do, but don't usually think too much about. When thinking of disaster relief charities, we're likely to imagine the people going to the scenes of earthquakes and tsunamis to help survivors. But someone has to make sure the money's going to the right place and keep the charity visible enough that more of it keeps coming in, and these are the people Ali Taylor puts at the centre of Fault Lines. Employing just four people plus an unpaid intern, a lesser-known disaster charity is struggling to stay afloat. An earthquake in Pakistan on Christmas Eve gives manager Pat (Nichola McAuliffe) the idea of being the first people on the scene. But the staff are hungover and bickering, and prone to making big mistakes.