Non-review: The Fifth Column

Ernest Hemingway wasn't really known as a playwright; for much the same reason, it turns out, as Eric Pickles isn't really known as a rhythmic gymnast. His only play, The Fifth Column, takes place where it was written, in the only two rooms of the Hotel Florida to be sheltered from bombing, in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War. Preston (Michael Shelford) and Dorothy (Alix Dunmore) are American war reporters but Rawlings (Simon Darwen) is only posing as one - he's actually a spy working for the International Brigades, and has dangerous suspects locked away in various other rooms of the hotel, although a sleepy soldier (James El-Sharawy) keeps letting them escape, at which point they invariably try to kill Rawlings. Despite this the play very quickly lost my interest; I can't call this a review as I only saw the first act.

Theatre review: Everyday Maps for Everyday Use

When the Finborough played host to the Papatango playwrighting competition for the first time last year, they went for an ambitious programme of staging, alongside the winner's month-long run, week-long runs of the other three finalists. This year they've reined things in a bit, with a couple of rehearsed readings of finalists, but full productions for the top two plays, running in repertory. First, the runner-up, Tom Morton-Smith's Everyday Maps for Everyday Use.

The soundtrack as the audience enters is a selection of Bowie's more space travel-fixated songs, as the play is set in Woking, where HG Wells had the aliens first invade in The War of the Worlds, and Morton-Smith's characters' lives, ambitions and sexual inclinations are all in some way or other tied up with Mars; the play follows the various ways the six people's lives intertwine.

Theatre review: Events While Guarding the Bofors Gun

Set in the freezing West German winter of 1954, John McGrath's Events While Guarding the Bofors Gun, the latest long-unperformed classic to be revived by the Finborough, takes a very personal angle on the frustrations of the Cold War. The Bofors Gun has long since been obsolete but on a British Army base the official line is that it still needs to be guarded in case the Russians try to steal it. Six gunners, led by an 18-year-old Lance-Bombardier, have the pointless task (so clearly only for show that their guns aren't even loaded) tonight - to add insult to injury they've just been paid so the unnecessary duty keeps them from joining the rest of the regiment in celebrating. When Lance-Bombardier Evans allows the volatile Gunner O'Rourke to slip away and pick up his weekly tobacco allowance, things go badly wrong.