Theatre review: Mayfly

If plays about forgotten corners of the countryside have been the low-key growing trend of the last couple of years, then the Orange Tree has been the theatre quietly putting itself at the forefront of it; and even if it's not quite another Jess and Joe Forever, Joe White's Mayfly is the second impressive playwrighting debut of the week (and the second one touching on grief, as it happens.) Cat's (Niky Wardley) horoscope says today is the day a special person will appear out of the blue, and the play's conceit is that it's right: Within a couple of hours Harry (Irfan Shamji) has met all three members of her family, starting when he pulls her husband Ben (Simon Scardifield) out of a river. Ben was trying to down himself because today marks the one-year anniversary of the death of his son.

Theatre review: Carrie

"Plug it up! Plug it up!" I can't have been the only one hoping Carrie would have a Rocky Horror-style interactive element, with the audience throwing tampons at the stage in the opening scene? No I wasn't, shush. May seems to be the month for Southwark Playhouse to get a big hit musical on its hands, but while last year's In The Heights came from New York with Tonys attached, this year's offering has, to say the least, more of a checkered past: Michael Gore, Dean Pitchford and Lawrence D. Cohen's Carrie has gone down in history as one of the biggest-ever musical flops. Despite a Stratford-upon-Avon run plagued by cast accidents (the blood short-circuited the radio mics, electrocuting them) it went straight to Broadway. The humiliation suffered there meant the performance rights were withdrawn for decades. So this heavily rewritten version, seen off-Broadway in 2012, is the first time it's ever been seen in London.