Theatre review: Blackout Songs

Joe White's Blackout Songs is an alcoholic love story, which Guy Jones' production plays as a kind of twisted rom-com: Anisha Fields' traverse set design is bordered by rows of chairs that call to mind AA (Alcoholics Anonymous, not the Automobile Association.) That's because an AA meeting is where the protagonists meet, but it soon becomes apparent they're not ready to commit to sobriety: Rebecca Humphries' Alice and Alex Austin's Charlie (the characters are listed as just "Her" and "Him" in the programme) both claim this is their first-ever AA meeting, and they don't even stay past the coffee: When she finds out he's going cold turkey, Alice tells Charlie that has a one-in-twenty fatality rate, and they should go out and get him one last drink to save his life.

Theatre review: Either

Do the box office at Hampstead Theatre keep a nightly record of how people pronounce Either when collecting their tickets, and take bets on which pronunciation will win every night? And if not, WHAT EVEN IS THE POINT OF ANYTHING?

Two consecutive trips to Hampstead Theatre wasn't exactly planned but it's not always easy to space things out in my diary, especially when a season is announced at late as this one was. Still, it makes for an interesting way to judge a new Artistic Director's mission statement to make a kind of double bill of the launch shows in both the main and studio spaces, and Either certainly suggests Roxana Silbert won't want to be left behind when theatre starts experimenting with changing ways of looking at the world. Specifically, in this instance, the changing understanding of what gender is and how it affects people's interactions: Ruby Thomas' play is about a couple, but is explicitly genderless - a stage direction projected onto Bethany Wells' set at the start insists that the two characters can and should be played by any and all genders.

Theatre review: Out of Water

In a South Shields school that's permanently getting "Requires Improvement" on its OFSTED reports, teacher Claire (Lucy Briggs-Owen) has been brought in to pilot an inclusion class scheme that's been successful elsewhere at turning round the fortunes of the most neglected students. It's not an obvious place for a pregnant, middle class lesbian to move to, and she's palpably nervous about how she'll be received there, but it's where her policewoman wife Kit (Zoe West) grew up, and she's convinced Claire it could be the place to start their family. Out of Water is the new play by Zoe Cooper, whose last play at the Orange Tree was Jess and Joe Forever, which means this an exciting prospect, but also has a lot to live up to. As in Cooper's earlier play this is a storytelling form of theatre, with Claire and Kit narrating fairly recent events, reliving their own part in them and taking on the other characters as needed.

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: Spokesong

Any 1970s Northern Irish play is going to at least touch on the Troubles, but Stewart Parker's Spokesong does so with a surprisingly light, even quirky approach. Frank (Stephen Cavanagh) runs the Belfast bike shop that's been the family business since the 1890s, but its future is threatened by a planned bypass that will see the building demolished in the name of easing traffic. The very idea of town planning in a city whose landscape is regularly changed by bombs seems like a kind of dark joke, but bicycles are Frank's passion as well as his job, and he has a plan to put forward to the council meeting: A fleet of free bicycles throughout the city, to be used by anyone as needed. As he meets his very own Daisy Bell (Elly Condron) and finds romance, Frank starts to imagine that his bicycle utopia could actually be the solution to all the city's troubles.