Theatre review: Middle

After what was meant to be a busy couple of weeks of theatregoing got derailed by me catching Covid, my first show back since testing negative again is the second in a loose trilogy about relationships: Beginning, the hit play about the first couple of hours of a brand-new relationship, was intended as a one-off, until writer David Eldridge decided during previews that it could in fact live up to its title, and begin a cycle of plays about relationships at different stages. So five years later we get a different couple whose marriage is, the title tells us, somewhere in the Middle. Although that's not how it initially feels when Maggie (Claire Rushbrook) gets up in the middle of the night to make herself a hot drink because she can't sleep, and husband Gary (Daniel Ryan) follows her downstairs, asking what's wrong. Her reply doesn't beat around the bush: "I'm not sure I love you any more."

theatre review: hang

for her new play, hang, debbie tucker green returns to the subject of her 2008 hit random, which saw an ordinary family devastated by a sudden crime. but this production, which tucker green also directs, has a much more high-concept starting point: she takes us to an alternate present day where not only is the death penalty still in use, but the victims of crime have a say in the punishment. one (claire rushbrook) and two (shane zaza) are civil servants working in an anonymous office, where they have a meeting with three (marianne jean-baptiste) to discuss a decision she's had the last couple of years to come to. she knows on the way in what she's going to say - and the play's title means it's no huge secret from the audience - but the necessary bureaucracy before we get to that point is where the play's story lies, as the tensions of the last few years come to the surface.