Theatre review: The Busy World is Hushed

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: The official opening is on Tuesday.

In Keith Bunin's The Busy World is Hushed, a woman struggles to prioritise the men in her life, two of whom are dead - one of them for the last two millennia. Hannah (Kazia Pelka) is an Episcopalian minister and bible scholar, whose husband drowned (possibly a suicide) a couple of months before she gave birth to their only son. Thomas (Michael James) has grown up restless and easily distracted, and has been disappearing from home for months at a time ever since he was 16, trying new ventures in life or just wandering out into the wilderness. He's now 26, older than his father was when he died, which has led him back home to delve through his papers and try to find out about a man his mother will tell him very little about. Hannah is worried he’ll leave again as soon as he finds what he’s looking for, but she’s got a plan to make him stick around a bit longer.

Theatre review: Shock Treatment

Famous flops are, of course, often revived years later to great acclaim, so that isn't what kept me away from Shock Treatment so long - especially since Julie Atherton leads the cast. But the King's Head's scheduling of the show at 10pm or midnight showings put me off until now, when the show's success has seen its run extended, and I could make a Sunday matinee performance. Richard Hartley, Richard O'Brien and Jim Sharman's sequel to The Rocky Horror Show took the opposite path to the original by being made into a film first - it was a critical and box office failure, meaning it hasn't turned up on a stage until now, with a new book by Tom Crowley. Brad (Ben Kerr) and Janet (Atherton) are now a married couple settled into small-town American anonymity, but Brad losing his job and Janet becoming the breadwinner has put a strain on their marriage.