Theatre review: Mates in Chelsea

The fact that the Royal Court, still probably best known for popularising kitchen sink plays and retaining a reputation as a political powerhouse, is based at the heart of Sloane Square has always been a bit of a contradiction, and one the venue has occasionally played on. The latest variation on the theme is also an attempt to link the location to the scripted reality show Made in Chelsea - "The Poshos," as my sister calls it - and the obliviously privileged characters people are familiar with from TV. Rory Mullarkey's Mates in Chelsea puts modern-day aristocrats in a P.G. Wodehouse-inspired farce in which Tug Bungay (Laurie Kynaston) lives a louche life in his Chelsea flat, looked after by his grumpy Leninist housekeeper Mrs Hanratty (Amy Booth-Steel,) whom he keeps around mainly because a wise-cracking Jeeves type suits the image of himself he likes to project.

Theatre review: Shrapnel - 34 Fragments of a Massacre

Anders Lustgarten can be something of a blunt instrument as a writer, a political playwright whose work is fuelled by anger - sometimes to its advantage, other times to its detriment. There's a slightly different approach in his latest play, though: The anger is still there in Shrapnel - 34 Fragments of a Massacre, but instead of something fiery he lets it seethe, as he observes from a distance the different situations and interests that conspired to cause the 2011 Roboski Massacre in Turkey. A group of Kurdish men, mostly teenagers, regularly smuggled diesel near the Syrian border. Despite knowing that such smuggling missions were common, the Turkish army seemingly mistook them for a terrorist cell on the move, and authorised a US missile drone to open fire and effectively vaporise them.