Theatre review: How To Survive An Apocalypse

After a longer closure than most theatres, and not one but two productions of Not Quite Jerusalem getting postponed by Covid, the Finborough finally reopens, at a reduced capacity due to the venue's intimacy (so, only four people per three-seater bench.) With that relaunch show falling foul of a positive test result, we're straight in to one of the Finborough's familiar remits, that promotes work from Canadian playwrights. And Jordan Hall's How To Survive An Apocalypse does have a suitably ironic title for a theatre coming out of lockdown, although it dates from 2016; and while there's little about it that couldn't happen today, Jimmy Walters' production doesn't update the timeline. Probably because no mention of Covid would be unusual in a play whose characters start to become obsessed with possible world-ending scenarios. To start with, though, the lives they're used to are under threat from much more mundane financial pressures.

Theatre review: The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus

Whatever else I might have to say about it, there's something to admire about a play that's had to stick a note on the doors of the pub below, apologising for the noise. Still, there's also good reason to be apprehensive about any play by Tony Harrison, a poet whose Fram still gives its name to one of the less flattering of my annual awards. But a much shorter running time makes it worth risking when he's attempting something that anyone interested in Ancient Greek theatre will want to see: I've often heard of the satyr plays that would provide the comic relief after a day of full-on tragedy, but I don't know much about them - probably because to the best of my knowledge only one survives. The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus is Harrison's attempt to recreate one of the lost satyr plays.

Theatre review: A Subject of Scandal and Concern

Theatre seems currently interested in reminding me of things I could have been arrested for if I'd been born decades or centuries earlier - the gay thing and the depressive thing on Friday, and today the atheism thing, as John Osborne tells the story of the last trial for blasphemy in England. A Subject of Scandal and Concern was originally written for television, and this stage adaptation hasn't been seen in London before, making Jimmy Walters' production another of the Finborough's trademark rediscoveries. The setting is 1842 Gloucestershire, where poor teacher George Jacob Holyoake (Jamie Muscato) is holding a lecture. He has a speech impediment and a tendency to dry up mid-speech, but despite being a poor speaker he's in demand to do so, as few other Socialists are willing to give public lectures.

Theatre review: A Naughty Night with Noël Coward

I'm starting to think it's just as well that Noël Coward was gay, because from the last few plays of his I've seen he seems to have found the idea of men smacking women around pretty hilarious. That particular ugly little meme raises its head in the second of a pair of one-acters grouped together under the theme of marital infidelity at the Old Red Lion, as A Naughty Night with Noël Coward. Jimmy Walters directs an hour of snappy witticisms that starts with We Were Dancing, set at a country club somewhere in Indonesia. Louise (Lianne Harvey) and Karl (James Sindall) have danced together and decided they're instantly in love. This doesn't go down too well with Louise's husband Hubert (John MacCormick) though. This is followed by the rediscovery The Better Half, which takes us to the boudoir of Alice (Tracey Pickup,) who's preparing for a dinner party with her friend Marion (Beth Eyre.) They're discussing a society divorce that's been the talk of the gossip pages.