Theatre review: Cuckoo

The opening scene of Cuckoo is funny, but feels like it comes from an already-dated play: Women from three generations sit around a dining table silently, all glued to their mobile phones. They're not quite ignoring each other, as a lot of the messages, jokes and funny videos they're looking at they forward right on to each other and share a laugh. But it's still a disconnected kind of family scene, and when Sarah (Jodie McNee) arrives with the fish and chips, she still struggles to get her mother Doreen (Sue Jenkins,) sister Carmel (Michelle Butterly) and niece Megyn (Emma Harrison) to put their phones down and talk to each other. When they do, the conversation turns to climate change and the teenage Megyn, who’s already been almost silent, has some kind of emotional breakdown and runs upstairs to her grandmother’s bedroom.

Theatre review: Who Cares

Continuing the theme since Vicky Featherstone took over the Royal Court of having shows explode out of the usual boundaries of its auditoria, Michael Wynne's verbatim play Who Cares technically takes place in the Upstairs Theatre. But before it gets there Debbie Hannan, Lucy Morrison and Hamish Pirie's promenade production takes the audience from the rehearsal rooms and offices behind Sloane Square station, to the staircases and corridors backstage, and the area that's usually the lighting booth of the Upstairs Theatre. This is all in service of us hearing the stories of, for the most part, workers in the National Health Service, building up a picture both of the emotional connection that this country has to the NHS, and exactly how it's being changed by successive governments - particularly the "stealth privatisation" brought in by the current coalition.