Theatre review: Candida

I'm not sure there's much at the moment that can't set off depressing thoughts on the current political situation, but walking into the Orange Tree to see the question "why are so many living in poverty?" as part of Simon Daw's set when, 120 years after Bernard Shaw's Candida premiered, the nation's official answer remains a resolute "who cares?" definitely has to qualify. The writings on the wall come from the Fabian Society, the influential Socialist group of which Shaw was a member, as is his character the Rev. James Morrell (Martin Hutson.) James is a much sought-after speaker who uses his day-job as a minister to drive home the similarity between Christian and Socialist values; he works tirelessly with support from his wife Candida (Claire Lams,) and practises what he preaches - some months earlier the couple helped a teenager they found sleeping rough on the Embankment.

Theatre review: The Lottery of Love

Its programming is fairly varied but Artistic Director Paul Miller's productions of classics a couple of times a year have become a signature of the Orange Tree. He usually picks British plays from the last century or so, but this time he's ventured a bit further afield, to the 18th century French writer Marivaux and his comedy The Lottery of Love. Sylvia (Dorothea Myer-Bennett) and Richard (Ashley Zhangazha) have been promised to each other since childhood, and are about to meet for the first time. Their fathers have both agreed they only need to go ahead with the marriage if they like each other, and Sylvia wants to make sure she catches Richard as he really is, not just on his best behaviour. So she hatches a scheme, agreed to by her father Mr Morgan (Pip Donaghy,) to trade places with her maid Louisa (Claire Lams,) and get all the gossip from her prospective husband's servants.

Theatre review: Kiss Me

He's still considered something of a big-hitter after the success of One Man, Two Guvnors, but Richard Bean's more recent plays have tended towards the disappointing, so a step back to something a bit more low-key and intimate could be a good move. And so it proves as Kiss Me is a two-hander running just over an hour, and premieres at Hampstead's Downstairs studio space. A romantic comedy-drama with a period setting but some unexpectedly modern attitudes, it takes place a few years after the First World War, which has left women all over Britain widowed, or with husbands so badly injured they can't father children. Enter the unseen and mysterious Dr Trollope, who finds desperate women and offers them an extreme solution: With fertility treatment still in its infancy, she can arrange for a visit from a particularly potent young man to make a baby the old-fashioned way.

Theatre review: Routes

Rachel De-lahay returns to the Royal Court Upstairs after The Westbridge with her follow-up Routes, which sees two men coming from opposite directions to end up in the same place: A detention centre for illegal immigrants waiting for deportation. The more obvious route is that taken by Femi (Peter Bankolé,) a Nigerian man whose family are living legally in London, but who for reasons that are revealed later can't join them through official channels. He deals with the shifty Abiola (Seun Shote,) always demanding bigger sums of money to get him his fake passport and visa to the UK, but the attempt to slip past Immigration looks less likely to succeed the more we find out about Femi. The real heart of the story though is a route that starts closer to home, in a London hostel and halfway house.