Theatre review: Vardy v Rooney: The Wagatha Christie Trial

It's ………

A speedy journey of less than a year from real-life courtroom drama to verbatim stage drama, the background to Vardy v Rooney: The Wagatha Christie Trial is a story I should probably recap, although I have a feeling this very British celebrity feud is one that probably became infamous worldwide: Two women best known for being the wives - aka WAGs - of top-flight football players, Coleen Rooney (Laura Dos Santos) and Rebekah Vardy (Lucy May Barker) had been fodder for newspaper gossip columns for years. When an increasing number of personal stories were published about her, Rooney suspected someone on her private Instagram account had been leaking them to the press and set a classic trap: She planted fake stories only her prime suspect could see, and when they duly appeared in the papers she publicly called her out in the most famous ellipsis since Monty Python: "It's ……… Rebekah Vardy's account.”

Theatre review: Pine

If Pine was 20 minutes shorter, it would be a pretty much perfect show. While Hampstead Theatre's main house doesn't tend to do a Christmas production, the Downstairs studio has made its own tradition of programming a twisted version of a festive special. We've had disastrous office parties and dysfunctional family reunions, and this year Jacqui Honess-Martin's play takes us to a large lot selling Christmas trees - not a cheap outfit on a street corner but part of a chain selling quality trees for up to £150 apiece (Polly Sullivan's design makes the audience rows of trees on sale, into which the characters can disappear to work or get off with each other.) The temporary workers there must be well-paid too, as they tend to return year after year. A graduate and aspiring journalist, Gabby (Hannah Britland) is there for the fourth year running as her career goals haven't worked out. She'll be joining her boyfriend in Germany in the New Year but for her last December at Festive Pines her boss Sami (David Mumeni) has chosen to make her manager of this particular outlet.

Theatre review: Thark

Last year the two most famous deconstructions of farce, Noises Off and What The Butler Saw were revived in London, but now for the unreconstructed thing itself: Ben Travers' Thark was one of the most successful of the Aldwych farces that ruled the West End in the 1920s. Whether it could fill that size of venue these days is questionable, and instead it's found its way to the main stage of the Park Theatre, in a production directed by Eleanor Rhode and designed, all staircases and sharp angles, by Cherry Truluck. Sir Hector Benbow (Clive Francis, who's also done some re-writing of the script) has invited young Cherry Buck (Lucy May Barker) for dinner in his wife's absence. But an argument over the sale of their country house, Thark, brings Lady Benbow (Mary Keegan) back to London unexpectedly so Hector asks his nephew Ronny (James Dutton) to pretend Cherry is his guest - a story that won't impress his fiancée. Add to this the arrival of Thark's new owner Mrs Frush (Joanna Wake) and the stage is set for a lot of running around and people posing as each other.