Theatre review: CARE

Alexander Zeldin's CARE takes place in a care home for the elderly, which Rosanna Vize's set design and James Farncombe's lighting bring to clinically realistic life, but with the odd flicker into something a bit eerier befitting a liminal space between life and death. Joan (Linda Bassett) arrives there after a fall damages her hip, believing that she'll be there for a few days at most until the physical injury recovers. But her daughter Lynn (Rosie Cavaliero) is already looking into making this a more permanent solution, as the accident was in part due to Joan's failing mental health, and the family can no longer trust that she won't be a danger to herself. As she spends her first few weeks in the home, an increasingly confused Joan does find some moments of joy as the residents share their life stories and highlights.

Stage-to-screen review: The Vote

The second James Graham political play to have been running in London concurrently with The Angry Brigade, tickets for The Vote at the Donmar Warehouse were allocated by ballot, so although I applied I wasn't able to see the show at the theatre. I guess that's democracy for you, Donmar members didn't get preferential treatment, and neither did critics - it's just a fortuitous coincidence that all the newspaper critics' applications successfully got them tickets for the same night. And just in time to give it a boost for its showing on More4 on election night! That was the alternative option for those of us who didn't get to see the starry cast in the flesh, a live broadcast at the exact time that the show is set: 8:30 to 10pm, the final 90 minutes of voting in a Lambeth polling station. It's a marginal seat and, with the election looking like a closer-run thing than it actually turned out to be, every vote could be crucial.

Theatre review: Birthday

The Royal Court made a big deal of keeping the plot of Joe Penhall's new play on their main stage, Birthday, a tightly-wrapped secret until the the show opened so that it would catch audiences by surprise. Which is fine for previews and up until Press Night, but once the publicity photos were released the secret was very much out as well. So for the majority of the audience the play will have to stand or fall by its own merits. If you're planning to see the show and have so far remained unspoiled, I'd recommend skipping the rest of this review. Vanessa didn't know the twist and it was fun to hear her reaction as the set revolved and she twigged what was going on. Penhall's subject here is the current state of the NHS, and based on his experience of the birth of his own child he gives us the story of Ed (Stephen Mangan) and Lisa (Lisa Dillon) who have just gone into a maternity hospital expecting their second child.