Theatre review: Orca

Not a 1970s movie made up largely of stock footage from Seaworld, this Orca is the latest Papatango winner, a playwrighting award that seems to have a weakness for scripts with a dark fantasy or sci-fi touch. But Matt Grinter's play only features the supernatural as part of its mythology, the actual immediate threat is all too inevitably human. The setting is a remote Scottish island, the time could be almost any part of the last hundred years, and the atmosphere is one of determined isolation: Fishing is naturally the main occupation, but while the boats go out to sea every day, it's very unusual for anyone to visit one of the neighbouring islands, let alone the mainland. Orca pods have been spotted in the ocean over the centuries, and are blamed for scaring off the fish whenever times are bad; the islanders have created a mythology and an associated annual ritual to protect their catch.

Theatre review: R and D

After its usual summer lull Hampstead Downstairs starts its new season with Simon Vinnicombe's R and D, a short sci-fi take on grief and betrayal. Lewis (Aden Gillett) is a writer who lost his wife a year ago, and whose moving eulogy for her went viral; the resulting popularity has only driven him further into grief and seclusion. His brother David (Martin Hutson) is a scientist working at some mysterious institute, the nature of which becomes apparent when he asks Lewis to take part, in return for a large fee, in some research and development on a long-running project. April (Jess Murphy) is a highly-realistic humanoid robot, and David and his team have reached the end of what they can find out in the lab. They want Lewis to spend time alone with her and report back on how convincingly human April can be.

Theatre review: Merit

Alexandra Wood’s Merit takes place in Spain, where the recession has hit jobs particularly hard, and opens with Sofia (Ellie Turner) a few weeks into a new, well-paid job with a high-powered banker. Her mother, '80s blouse-wearer Patricia (Karen Ascoe,) confronts Sofia with her suspicions about how her daughter got a PA job that, by her own admission, other people were better-qualified for. Did she offer her new boss Antonio something extra in return for a job so well paid it's now not only supporting her, but also helping pay her parents' mortgage? Although offended, Sofia doesn't actually deny the accusation, instead moving away from home to sleep on a friend's couch. Over the next few months Patricia tries to reconnect with her daughter, turning up outside her work, informing her of the ways the recession is affecting them - her father first losing his job, then attempting suicide - and asking to meet Antonio, because if he really did give Sofia her job on merit, presumably he'll give one to her equally-qualified mother.

Theatre review: Hindle Wakes

"It isn't fair, but it's usual." Stanley Houghton's story of the small industrial Lancashire town of Hindle, where three families are trying to avoid scandal, has been seen as a classic proto-feminist play, and apparently when first produced Hindle Wakes proved controversial. Given a fairly light-hearted revival at the Finborough Theatre by Bethan Dear, it's still possible to see how it could have put people's backs up in 1912, with its cheeky asides about the suffragettes amid a surprisingly modern attitude to female sexuality. When the friend who was meant to provide her alibi meets with a tragic accident, Fanny's (Ellie Turner) weekend away with mill owner's son Alan Jeffcote (Graham O'Mara) is exposed. If word gets out that Fanny's a "ruined woman" nobody will marry her, so her father Christopher (Peter Ellis) is dispatched to get Alan to do the "decent thing." But there's a complication as Alan's long been engaged to another woman.