Theatre review: Ragdoll

Following the surprise success of her debut Farm Hall, Katherine Moar returns to Jermyn Street Theatre for her follow-up. This time she doesn't have real-life recordings to use verbatim, but if her story is technically fiction it's no secret that it also has a real-life inspiration: If the blurb didn't already mention it, Ragdoll is full of overt clues that the character of Holly is based on Patty Hearst. In 1978 the Heiress (Katie Matsell) is on trial for her role in a string of robberies, and her lawyer (Ben Lamb) is convinced he can make the extenuating circumstances catch the jury's sympathy: Kidnapped by a cult-like criminal gang, she was sexually assaulted and brainwashed until given the option of joining in the crime spree in return for being released. But his confidence is misplaced, and the best result he can get her is that she only serves two years of a prison term.

Theatre review: Farm Hall

When looking at the ethics of science, there's no more fertile ground for writers to explore than the atomic bomb. In her impressive playwrighting debut, Katherine Moar explores the issue through six scientists who've already lost the nuclear arms race - they just don't know it yet. Based on a real event and secretly recorded conversations, Farm Hall takes place during the last days of the Second World War, after Hitler's fall and the revelation of the true horrors Germany had perpetrated. The six German men are under house arrest in an English country pile, filling their time playing chess, mending a broken piano, and staging a reading of Blithe Spirit, whose recent success in the middle of the Blitz baffles them. They are Hitler's surviving nuclear physicists who hadn't already defected by VE Day, and nobody seems sure what to do with them, or even if they'll be allowed to survive their comfortable prison.