Theatre review: Pioneer

Last year The Kindness of Strangers garnered less praise from me than it did from most people - although that's not because I disliked it as such, but because it gave me motion sickness. With Shoreditch Town Hall seeming more likely to stay still for 80 minutes than the back of an ambulance, I decided to give Curious Directive another go, with a (hopefully less queasy) trip to their 2014 Fringe First winner, Pioneer. It's 2029*, eight years after an initial mission to send astronauts to Mars ended in disaster, and now a new crew is being sent up amid much publicity. What the public doesn't know is that in the intervening years a top-secret mission has sent a Dutch couple to the planet, and their successful survival has made NASA confident enough to go public with the latest attempt. As they await the new arrivals though, one of the astronauts disappears while carrying out routine repairs. Left alone with just her fears and the ship's computer, his partner Imke (Flora Denman) starts to crack.

Theatre review: Never Try This At Home

When a show's publicity tells you that people sitting in the front row will be given a plastic mac to wear over their clothes, it's a safe bet that the front row's a place to be avoided. Of course, it's just as safe a bet that people like me and Phill will head straight for it, and that's what I recommend you do as well if you go see Told By An Idiot's Never Try This At Home. The silliest show I've seen for a long time but with a surprisingly serious core, it's a take-down of 1970s and '80s Saturday morning children's TV with a lot to say about the attitudes of the time as well. With all the characters sharing their actors' names there's a feeling that the scripted parts of the show are complemented by a fair bit of genuine improvisation - especially as it's fronted by Whose Line Is It Anyway? stalwart Niall Ashdown as a present-day TV presenter.