Theatre review: Trestle

Although it's discovered some great plays over the last few years, the Papatango Prize winners tend to suggest the judges favour pretty bleak stories. So Stewart Pringle's Trestle feels like a bit of a change of pace, a gentler, more ambiguous play about barely-a-relationship between two pensioners. Widower Harry (Gary Lilburn) is the chairman of a "local improvement" committee in a small Yorkshire town, and every Thursday afternoon they meet at the local community centre. Denise (Connie Walker) is more recently retired, and has booked the next slot to teach a Zumba class for seniors. She meets Harry while he’s still clearing up after his meeting and, after an awkward misunderstanding where he mistakes her for the cleaner, helps him fold the trestle table. Over the next six months or so they meet for a few minutes like this every week, soon timing their arrivals and departures to make sure they don’t miss each other.

Theatre review: Folk

Apart from my regular trips to Stratford-upon-Avon it takes a lot to get me to the outer reaches of the Oyster card for theatre - there's already more than enough in Zones 1-2. But even if, like Jumpers for Goalposts did three years ago, Folk does get a more central transfer, once again a new Tom Wells play is reason enough to travel to Watford rather than risk missing it. Wells' full-length plays have all featured an introverted young gay man from somewhere outside Hull, but while the character of Stephen (Patrick Bridgman) is 50-something, he's still similar to Stitch, Billy and Luke in most ways. The setting is the front room of Winnie (Connie Walker,) his best friend, a Catholic nun with a fondness for cigarettes, Guinness and - this being 2016 - playing the spoons. A young man a few doors down has died in a car accident, and to cheer themselves up after the funeral the pair enjoy their favourite Friday night activity: Folk music.