Theatre review: Out of Season

Back to Hampstead and this week I'm Downstairs for its latest commission, Neil D'Souza's Out of Season and a midlife crisis comedy that gently takes in some themes you don't often see on stage. Thirty years ago, a trio of university friends went on a memorable holiday to Ibiza. Now, to celebrate his 50th birthday, Chris (Peter Bramhill) has asked that they recreate the trip - right down to the same room in the same hotel. Regardless of how many times he and Dev (D'Souza) say it's been done up since they were last there, the grubby walls and fading paint of Janet Bird's set suggest both the fact that they might have unrealistically romanticised their original holiday, and that they, like the room, have seen better days. Once in a band that came within sight of success only to miss their chance, manchild Chris still plays gigs in pubs, while Dev has become an academic and music historian, grumpily putting himself through a week he didn't really fancy for his old friend's sake.

Theatre review: The Hypocrite

2017 is the year of Hull as UK city of culture, and although they're based in Warwickshire the RSC have got in on the act, co-producing a new commission with Hull Truck Theatre. The city is at the heart of The Hypocrite, which although being written in the style of a Restoration comedy takes its story from true events from well before the Restoration, indeed before there was any need for a Restoration, as the titular character, Sir John Hotham (Mark Addy,) was the Governor of Hull in 1642, just as the Civil War was about to break out. His story was a scandal that put the city at the centre of the action, so it's natural that Hull's best and funniest living playwright should be chosen to tell it. But he must have been busy so they just got Richard Bean in to recycle some of the more successful bits from One Man, Two Guvnors.