Theatre review: Saxon Court

If December's on the horizon then it's a good bet there'll be a play about an office Christmas party. It's a very specific Christmas in Daniel Andersen's debut Saxon Court, that of 2011, and the office is near St Paul's Cathedral. So as well as the ongoing effects of the financial crisis, the recruiters at Saxon Court also have to deal with the Occupy protesters on their doorstep. Donna Saxon's (Debra Baker) company recruits for the financial sector, and though they have plenty of clients on their books it's been a while since they found a job for any of them, and Donna's facing the probability that her company may go under. She knows she needs to fire someone if they're to stand any chance of staying in business, but with the staff from the Dartford branch due to arrive for the party later in the day, she tries to bury this harsh reality, and demands her staff have an aggressively good time.

Theatre review: Responsible Other

Sometimes, it turns out, it actually is Lupus. At least it is for 15-year-old Daisy (Alice Sykes) who, in Melanie Spencer's Responsible Other, has the disease whose obscurity and mass of possible symptoms made it a weekly suspect for Dr House. Only a couple of years after her mother's death from cancer, Daisy has been diagnosed with the disease that turns the immune system against itself, and in her case is making kidney failure a real possibility. Weekly chemotherapy could help, but her father Peter (Andy Frame) is struggling to stay afloat as a single parent, and the trips from Northampton to St Thomas' Hospital would mean missing more work than he can afford to. In desperation he turns to the sister-in-law he hasn't seen since Daisy was a baby: Diane (Tricia Kelly) is a recluse with a history of mental illness, and the thought of accompanying the niece she barely knows to London is terrifying to her.