Theatre review: The Trials

With climate catastrophe seeming more bleakly inevitable by the minute, you'd think the near future looked depressing enough without imagining an even more dystopian version of it; but fair play to Dawn King, whose The Trials goes for it anyway. At some point in the future, climate change has made the air outside unbreathable without masks, droughts and flooding are regular occurrences, and refugees have had to flee much of the planet for the few areas that are still just about habitable. Being the generation that will have to live with the consequences of what the preceding ones did, children and teenagers have seized control, and the twelve young protagonists of King's play have been called to two weeks' jury duty, to judge their elders' crimes. But these aren't politicians or industrialists who wilfully destroyed the environment for profit; all of them were tried long ago, and the spotlight has now moved onto anyone who could be considered to have done less than they could have to stop the disaster.

Theatre review: Foxfinder

Last seen in London in 2011 when it was the Papatango award winner, Dawn King's Foxfinder is, on the face of it, a canny revival for 2018 when its paranoia and scapegoating can be repackaged as a Brexit play. But something's gone wrong in the execution of Rachel O'Riordan's production, and it’s left a play that can be genuinely creepy and atmospheric floundering. Samuel (Paul Nicholls) and Judith Covey (Heida Reed) own a farm somewhere in a dystopian England where food is scarce, so farmers like them are under immense pressure to live up to – seemingly quite unrealistic – crop quotas. Some months earlier, the couple’s four-year-old son drowned, and Samuel retreated into a long depression. Between this and bad weather they’re struggling to live up to their targets so the government has sent an investigator to determine if they’ve mismanaged the farm, or worse: If there’s a fox on their land.

Theatre review: Ciphers

Dawn King follows up the strange, mystical Foxfinder which made her name, with a play set in an altogether slicker world, but still one with a constant air of menace. In fact the danger is definitely real here, as within a couple of scenes the leading character of Ciphers is dead. Justine (Gráinne Keenan) is an MI5 agent who, after starting out listening in to phone conversations, is soon promoted to field work. Keenan also plays Justine's sister Kerry who, after the spy's apparent suicide, hears rumours of foul play and wants answers. The play bounces back and forward in time as we see Kerry try to deal with her sister's death, and pressure Justine's boss Sunita (Shereen Martin) for answers; as well as giving us flashbacks to two missions Justine was involved in, either one of which could have led to her death.