Theatre review: X

A much-anticipated new play from Alistair McDowall, after his sleeper hit Pomona, and following the dark fantasy of that play he goes sci-fi for X, set on a research station on retired planet Pluto. Not that there's much there to research (the Americans get all the interesting missions) and even if there were Ray (Darrell D'Silva) and his team's contracts expired weeks ago - or possibly months, but the clock which keeps the base on Earth time is increasingly unreliable - it might have been much longer than they think. Ray second-in-command Gilda (Jessica Raine) is visibly feeling the strain, prone to regular panic attacks and tears, and snapping at her co-workers Cole (Rudi Dharmalingam) and Clark (James Harkness.) Surprisingly chipper is Mattie (Ria Zmitrowicz,) who rattles around in the ceiling taking care of the life support systems which she refers to as "the girls."

Theatre review: Great Britain

Playwright Richard Bean has been off the radar a bit since the all-conquering One Man, Two Guvnors, but he's going to be cropping up regularly in London in the next few months. First up is a topical play - so topical that it had to wait for a high-profile court case to end before the National could even officially confirm it was being staged. That's because Great Britain is a fictionalised version of the recent phone-hacking scandal that's seen the press become its own biggest story. Paige Britain (Billie Piper) is the news editor of tabloid newspaper The Free Press, and expected to be its next editor. Her story-gathering methods have never been squeaky clean, but a seemingly minor story brings to her attention a crucial piece of information: Each mobile phone operator has a single default pin number across all its users. Since hardly anyone changes their pin, all you need to know is someone's phone number to be able to listen to their voicemail remotely.