Theatre review: I'm Not Being Funny

Piers Black's accurately-titled I'm Not Being Funny begins with an interesting high concept: A mix of bleak drama and stand-up comedy, it follows young married couple Peter (Jerome Yates) and Billie (Transphobia Ltd Employee Tia Bannon) as they practice comedy routines in their living room, preparing for an open-mic night Billie has signed them up for. She thinks it could be a good form of couple's therapy for them, and at first it seems she might be trying to help Peter deal with his anxiety over never being able to make their three-year-old daughter laugh. As their attempts to build a "tight five" minutes each go on though we discover that the trauma they're dealing with is a lot more serious: Billie has a terminal disease and four to six years left to live, and the open mic is her way of dealing both with her own feelings, and how the news has impacted the relationship with her family.

Theatre review: Weald

As well as the Finborough's numerous official remits, Neil McPherson does also seem to have a fondness for scheduling rural dramas. The latest is Daniel Foxsmith's Weald, set in what used to be a large farm, but over the years much of it has been sold off, and Sam (David Crellin) is the last of the family that owned it for a couple of centuries. What he's got left is a stables, currently housing eight ageing horses and just about enough work to keep him busy, but when a young man arrives asking for a job he can't turn him down: Jim (Dan Parr) worked for him as a teenager before leaving to try his luck in London. He's come back up North now fleeing something (the same something every young man in a show I've seen recently seems to be running to or from) and, having been with Jim's father when he died, Sam's developed something of a surrogate father/son relationship with Jim.

Theatre review: Operation Crucible

The demise of Sheffield's steelworks will be a big deal in the West End next year when The Full Monty comes to town, but for now here's a group of (sadly) more conservatively-dressed men from the days when the city's industry was not just flourishing, but crucial to the country's survival. The manufacture of knives and forks left Sheffield's two local football teams fighting over the nickname "Blades," but during the Second World War knives were replaced by more dangerous weapons as the city became the heart of Britain's munitions manufacturing. Despite being the place where Spitfire parts were made, the only time German planes were heard overhead was when they were on their way to bomb another city. But on the 12th of December 1940 Germany finally realised the strategic importance and Sheffield got its own Blitz, leaving it almost flattened.