Theatre review: Captain Amazing

Captain Amazing dates from ten years ago, so it's just before playwright Alistair McDowell was a big enough name to get the budget for eldritch abominations, deep space mysteries and time-travelling mythical figures. But while it's a monologue dealing with very down-to-earth causes for joy and despair, it's still couched in terms of an SF world - in this case that of comic-book superheroes. Mark Weinman appears in jeans and a T-shirt, along with a long red cape as he takes us through a decade or so of the life of a man, also called Mark, who's been drunkenly pestering people in a club, insisting he's the titular hero. What led him to this point begins at his job in B&Q, helping a customer who will eventually become his wife. Sooner than they might have expected they become parents, and Mark is a devoted dad although not necessarily one who feels he knows what he's doing - especially once the marriage starts to break down.

Stage-to-screen review: Lights Up - Sitting

Future Dame Katherine Parkinson's Sitting was staged at the Arcola two years ago. Although the credits acknowledge that it's based on Sarah Bedi's original production, and keeps one of the original cast members in Mark Weinman, this film for the BBC's Lights Up strand is a new production from Jeremy Herrin, with the playwright now also taking on one of the roles: Parkinson plays Mary, a recently-divorced mother of one with some unresolved feelings about her dead sister. Luke (Weinman) is unemployed and soon to be a father; though he keeps insisting he hates his pregnant wife, the way he talks about her suggests otherwise. Cassandra (Alex Jarrett) is an aspiring actress and seemingly a compulsive liar. Their monologues are interspersed with each other, each of them speaking to an artist, John (briefly seen played by Paul Jesson,) who's painting their portraits.

Theatre review: Barrow Hill

After a couple of fairly intense plays in July, the Finborough Theatre has gone for a more low-key August, pairing Cornelius with a first play by Jane Wainwright in the Sunday-Tuesday slot. Barrow Hill is set in the titular Derbyshire village, outside a 19th-century Methodist chapel that's about to be converted into flats. Kath (Janet Henfrey) is 84 and, with her husband and most of her friends dead, the chapel is now the one place that holds her happiest memories. She decides to camp outside it and protest the conversion, but this conflict has a personal edge to it: The building company that's got the contract is owned by her son Graham (Charlie Roe.) Wainwright's short play keeps coming back to the idea of a legacy being left behind, and it not necessarily being the thing the parent wants to leave their child: Graham himself is having problems with daughter Alison, who doesn't seem as thrilled as he hoped at the prospect of inheriting the building firm.