Theatre review: Luna Gale

An uneven play but one with a lot of positives at Hampstead Theatre, where Michael Attenborough directs Rebecca Gilman's drama Luna Gale. Caroline (Sharon Small) is a social worker in an Iowa district still recovering from a scandal in which her former boss managed to lose the records of dozens of at-risk children. Caroline herself was not implicated, but it has meant her department now has to pass all decisions by state-appointed supervisor Cliff (Ed Hughes.) It means her decades' worth of experience is still being questioned when she deals with the case of Luna, the baby of teenage parents who recently and unexpectedly developed a meth habit. While Karlie (Rachel Redford) and Peter (Alexander Arnold) undergo counselling and wait for a rehab slot to become available, Luna is to be cared for by her grandmother Cindy (Caroline Faber.)

Theatre review: This House

In 1974, two general elections resulted in a hung parliament (no clear majority) followed by a slim Labour majority. Without forming a coalition government, this was a parliament never expected to survive long, but against the odds they hung on for almost the full five years. With such a slim majority getting any legislation passed was a herculean task, so This House, James Graham's fictionalised take on these turbulent years in the House of Commons, avoids putting the best-known public faces of 1970s politics on stage. Instead the focus is on the whips of the two main parties. (For the benefit of Americans and other aliens: Whips are MPs for each major party whose job it is to ensure all MPs on their side vote according to the party line. With a majority of just 3 right after the election, just a couple of rebel backbenchers could scupper a government's attempts to push new bills through.)

Theatre review: Democracy

After the craziness of Noises Off, a different side to Michael Frayn's work comes to the Old Vic. Plugging a gap before the venue goes into Olympic hibernation is a transfer from Sheffield, Paul Miller's production of Democracy. And it's another in the batch of Cold War plays that have been an unlikely theme in London lately, charting the early 1970s through the office of West German Chancellor Willy Brandt (Patrick Drury.) As the play opens Brandt is the head of a tenuous coalition with the Liberal party, and the first left-wing West German government since the War. He plans to make advances towards healing the rift with the Eastern Bloc, who are themselves keen to find out if he can be trusted: We see the story through the eyes of Günter Guillaume (Aidan McArdle,) an East German sleeper agent reporting back to his handler (Ed Hughes.) Gossip is rife of a spy in the ranks, but the comically dull Guillaume goes unsuspected, gradually being given positions of trust next to Brandt.