Theatre review:Wickies: The Vanishing Men of Eilean Mòr

My eccentric reasons for booking shows can result in some disastrous choices as well as unearthing some hidden gems. The fact that I realised I could see both the gays from Two Doors Down on stage in consecutive shows led me to a couple of twists on traditional seasonal stories, and after something inspired in the very loosest possible sense by A Christmas Carol, it's Park Theatre's Scottish take on the traditional Christmas ghost story. But Paul Morrissey's Wickies: The Vanishing Men of Eilean Mòr takes its inspiration from a very real mystery: In 1900, three lighthouse keepers vanished without trace from the Flannan Isles, a particularly remote and dangerous part of the Outer Hebrides. Morrissey's play is only the latest in a long tradition of poems, stories and songs that have taken the mystery into the realms of folk legend.

Theatre review: Things I Know to be True

Frantic Assembly use their signature physical style on an unlikely genre, the family melodrama, for Australian playwright Andrew Bovell's Things I Know to be True. The title refers to a mental list kept by Rosie Price (Kirsty Oswald,) a young woman on her gap year in Europe, who gets fucked in more ways than one by a handsome Italian and, heartbroken, makes an early return to suburban Adelaide and her parents Fran (Imogen Stubbs) and Bob (Ewan Stewart.) The baby of the family, Rosie's list is of comforting things about her family and how she'll always know where she stands with them, so of course she's barely back before it all starts to change. Eldest brother Mark (Matthew Barker) has been dumped by his long-term girlfriend due to a crisis he's not yet shared with the others, while Ben's (Richard Mylan) big-spending lifestyle is clearly leading to trouble.

Theatre review: The Royale

Inspired by the real story of Jack Johnson, Marco Ramirez' The Royale is a fictionalised version of the early days of black boxers entering the mainstream in a still-segregated America. It's 1905, and Jay "The Sport" Jackson (Nicholas Pinnock) has been rising through the ranks to become Negro Heavyweight Champion and is hugely popular, selling out larger and larger venues. The real goal, though, is to be Champion, not of the Black World or the White World, but of the World; and for that he needs the white, reigning heavyweight champion to come out of retirement. It's a challenge nobody expects him to accept but Jay's promoter Max (Ewan Stewart) manages to arrange the match. So we follow Jay as he trains for his historic fight, but to let him concentrate Max and his trainer Wynton (Clint Dyer) are shielding him from some of the consequences his challenge is having in the world outside the ring.

Theatre review: Let The Right One In

A teenage vampire love storyNO WAIT, COME BACK! IT'S NOT WHAT YOU THINK! Having read John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel and seen the first of the two film adaptations, Let The Right One In feels very familiar to me but it seems not everyone has even heard of it, so may need reassuring that absolutely nothing sparkles. Except maybe some blood in the snow. Instead this is a bleakly Scandinavian but strangely romantic coming-of-age story that takes in vicious bullying, blurred gender identity and an undercurrent of paedophilia. Basically standard Christmas fare for the Royal Court, where Jack Thorne's adaptation comes following its premiere earlier this year for the National Theatre of Scotland. And though the original 1980s Swedish setting remains (with an authenticity that goes all the way to chocolate bars called Plopp) the accents are all Scottish in John Tiffany's atmospheric production.