Theatre review: The Here and This and Now

Paired up with The War Has Not Yet Started in Theatre Royal Plymouth's rep season at Southwark Playhouse, Glenn Waldron's The Here and This and Now takes a look at pharmaceutical companies on an intimate scale and, eventually, a global one. Niall (Simon Darwen) leads a team of pharmaceutical reps on a team-building away-day. Alongside games where they recite their sales mantra of "Captivate! Associate! Detonate! Kill!" the central point is for them all to rehearse Niall's trademark pitch to receptionists, a cheesy story about his sick son designed to create empathy and get them five minutes with a senior consultant to sell discount liver-spot cream. Gemma (Tala Gouveia) is new to the team and enthusiastically delivers her own version of the pitch, but the other two members have been working for the company much longer and have a much more cynical outlook on what they're doing.

Radio review: King Lear (Radio 3)

BBC Radio 4 have been serialising Shakespeare but there's no such messing about over on Radio 3 - Gaynor Macfarlane's production of King Lear was presented as an uninterrupted 150 minutes (although personally I downloaded the iPlayer version onto my kindle and listened to it over a couple of days' worth of train journeys and lunch breaks.) When staging or filming Shakespeare it's easy to impose a high concept; less easy without the visuals, but this production has been given an all-Scottish cast, led by the distinctive voices of Ian McDiarmid as Lear, the king who, as madness sets in, puts his faith in the wrong two daughters while banishing the only loyal one; and Bill Paterson as Gloucester, who makes a similar error of judgement with his two sons. The fact that everyone has a Scottish accent (except for Simon Harrison's King of France who, paradoxically, is given an English one) could have been confusing but there's enough variety in voice and subtle differences in accent never to make it a problem.

Theatre review: The Low Road

Bruce Norris provided Dominic Cooke with his first show as artistic director of the Royal Court, as well as the play that perhaps best summed up his tenure for me, Clybourne Park. So it's to Norris that Cooke turns again for his farewell production, and an epic, comic and sometimes downright bizarre parable in The Low Road. With the American War of Independence looming, a baby is left on the doorstep of a brothel, with a note promising whoever raises him will be rewarded when he turns 17. There will be money coming Jim Trumpett's way by the end of his teens, but it'll be of his own making, as the budding capitalist "reorganises" the brothel's finances, cheerfully ripping off the prostitutes who helped raise him in the process. Setting off on a ruthless moneymaking odyssey, Jim's first financial transaction is to buy a slave, and his subsequent business dealings don't get any nicer.

Theatre review: And No More Shall We Part

January's happy wacky fun party continues with a play about assisted suicide. Tom Holloway's And No More Shall We Part is the latest show in Hampstead's Downstairs season, and sees terminally ill Pam attempting to take her own life before her unspecified illness robs her of her dignity. On a small revolve, the action alternates between Pam's deathbed, where the pills are taking longer than expected to take effect, and the days leading up to it, starting when she tells her horrified husband Don what she intends.

Dearbhla Molloy and Bill Paterson's performances are masterclasses in quiet dignity and the play is undoubtedly possessed of some very moving moments. These come out of the blue to grab you by the throat at times but unfortunately this is partly because, for the majority of the 85 minutes, both the play itself and James Macdonald's direction stick monotonously to the same pace, which makes for a soporific effect: At times I was conscious of myself both admiring Molloy's performance as Pam desperately tries to go to sleep for good, and at the same time trying to keep myself awake.

The odd staging is also a bit of a distraction. Hannah Clark's set puts the furniture of a cosy family home on a revolve and backdrop covered in shiny black tile; while two of the stage management team are visible at the sides of the stage, operating the lighting and sound boards and occasionally taking props up to the actors. I was at a bit of a loss as to what this ostentatiously Brechtian staging was meant to signify. There are some plus points to the script - I was torn over my response to Pam refusing all of Don's requests, like having their children present: At times I felt she was being selfish as he was the one who'd be left behind with the consequences of how she died, at others I thought denying his wishes was a kindness to make sure he wasn't left feeling responsible. But the loving couple revealing affairs from several years previously feels like a standard trope that comes out of nowhere (if in need of emergency character points, break glass) and goes nowhere. And while the performances are excellent, I wished they'd been given more to explore about their characters than just his frustration and her serene stoicism.

And No More Shall We Part by Tom Holloway is booking until the 11th of February at Hampstead Theatre's Michael Frayn Space.

Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes straight through.