Theatre review: Stony Broke in No Man’s Land

Many theatres took time in 2014 to mark the 100th anniversary of the First World War beginning, but the Finborough's THEGREATWAR100 is an occasional series of programming due to keep returning until the centenary of its end. It means that in a few years' time we're sure to get a return of the theme as theatres mark the Armistice and the way the dead were memorialised, but the Finborough's current season steals a march on them as far as the latter subject goes: The main show took us to Australia for ANZAC Day, and the Sunday-Tuesday rep show brings us closer to home for John Burrows' Stony Broke in No Man's Land. David Brett and Gareth Williams play two old buskers who, some years after returning from the front, look back at the promises that the survivors' old jobs would be waiting for them, and the reality that saw them feel their sacrifice had been swiftly forgotten.

Theatre review: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

A travelling fair makes its annual trip to a small German town, with a new star attraction: The Somnambulist, in which Dr. Caligari (Oliver Birch) exhibits the seriously ill man he's been "looking after," Cesare (Christopher Doyle,) who suffers from a sleeping sickness but can perform any number of feats in his sleep - including predicting the future. The arrival of the fair coincides with an outburst of strangling, and suspicion falls on jittery Town Hall employee Franzis (Joseph Kloska,) who knew and disliked both victims. Franzis denies committing the murders - or at least, he has no memory of doing so, but increasingly distrusts what is real and what a dream. Sebastian Armesto and Dudley Hinton of Poor Theatre company simple8 adapt and direct the classic German expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari as part of a residency at the Arcola (next month they present Moby-Dick, and there's reduced-price tickets for booking both shows together.)

Theatre review: Outward Bound

Outward Bound sees the Finborough's stage configured, by designer Alex Marker, into a similar in-the-round setup as last year's Accolade, with several audience members effectively on the stage. Though why this made some of these audience members feel free to leave their drinks on the set and even, on more than one occasion, move some of the on-set chairs around, I don't know. (Actually that's not true, the occasional loud cackles and strong smell of red wine gave me a pretty strong clue as to why.) Still, it wasn't bad enough to spoil the performance. The Finborough's latest "rediscoveries" season opens with another play, like 2010's Quality Street, that was a massive West End and Broadway hit in its day and spawned multiple film adaptations, but at some point fell out of favour and into obscurity: This is the first London revival of Sutton Vane's 1923 play in half a century. (The playwright's real name was Vane Sutton-Vane, which means a nice tie-in to this week's double-barrelled theme. It also means he's so Vane, he probably thinks this song is about him.) There are some pretty obvious reasons why Outward Bound's marketability has faded, but they don't mean the production's not enjoyable on its own terms.