Theatre review: Merit

Alexandra Wood’s Merit takes place in Spain, where the recession has hit jobs particularly hard, and opens with Sofia (Ellie Turner) a few weeks into a new, well-paid job with a high-powered banker. Her mother, '80s blouse-wearer Patricia (Karen Ascoe,) confronts Sofia with her suspicions about how her daughter got a PA job that, by her own admission, other people were better-qualified for. Did she offer her new boss Antonio something extra in return for a job so well paid it's now not only supporting her, but also helping pay her parents' mortgage? Although offended, Sofia doesn't actually deny the accusation, instead moving away from home to sleep on a friend's couch. Over the next few months Patricia tries to reconnect with her daughter, turning up outside her work, informing her of the ways the recession is affecting them - her father first losing his job, then attempting suicide - and asking to meet Antonio, because if he really did give Sofia her job on merit, presumably he'll give one to her equally-qualified mother.

Theatre review: The Empty Quarter

Greg and Holly moved to Dubai as a result of a vague romantic attraction of Holly's to the desert. In fact when we first meet them, Holly (Jodie McNee) is recovering from wandering off out into it and getting lost. Greg (Gunnar Cauthery) hasn't taken to the place and, concerned about his wife's health as she continues to be fascinated by the desert that nearly killed her, quits his job in the hope that it'll shock her into returning to the UK with him. But he's reckoned without the draconian local laws against getting into debt. One missed mortgage payment later and he's in a Middle Eastern prison, and the only way out is a loan from the closest thing they have to friends out there, an older English couple. And a business deal with Gemma (Geraldine Alexander) and Patrick (David Hounslow) ends up looking more like a Faustian pact when the two couples become the only constant in each other's lives.