Theatre review: Tomcat

After a few years based at the Finborough, the annual Papatango playwrighting prize has moved to a new home with roughly twice the seating capacity, in Southwark Playhouse's Little space. This year's winner, James Rushbrooke, taps into the current trend for plays about science with Tomcat. In a not-too-distant future, genetic screening of foetuses has resulted in the eradication of most illnesses, but at the cost of roughly one in four pregnancies being terminated - a legal requirement if a scan finds anything out of the ordinary. A subculture does exist that rejects this degree of state interference, so there are a few exceptions - one of them is 12-year-old Jessie (Eleanor Worthington-Cox,) who's been kept under observation by the authorities since they discovered her at the age of three. She's lived in the same windowless room since then, forbidden from touching people or making any sudden moves: According to her genetic makeup, she might be a psychopath.

Theatre review: Narrative

If Anthony Neilson writes a play called Narrative, one thing you can be fairly confident about going in is that there won't be a traditional narrative on offer. Although the action does coalesce into a story as the play goes on and the characters form relationships, what Neilson and his actors are interested in is the way life itself can be experienced as a story, and consequently rewritten in hindsight. A mother (Christine Entwisle) channels her grief over her son's death into a petition to ban the drug that killed him; when new information shines a different light on events, how does it also change what her life has become? A young woman (Zawe Ashton) goes through a series of failed relationships; she changes her backstory about how her mother's love made her who she is, but the outcome of her relationships is always the same. And an actor's (Big Favourite Round These Parts Oliver Rix) success sees his life become as fake as the character he's playing on screen.