Theatre review: The Mystae

Author of the gently Kafkaesque The Complaint, Nick Whitby returns to Hampstead Downstairs with something pretty different in The Mystae. An August night in a Cornish cave near the sea, just after the A'Level results have come out, and Ina (Beatrice Scirocchi) has told her boyfriend Holman (Adam Buchanan) about an ancient Eleusinian ritual that they plan to reenact. A ham pastie replaces the slaughtered pig, and a bar of Cadbury's Fruit and Nut represents the bounty of the Earth, but the powerful hallucinogens they've got hold of are authentic. Before they can get started though there's another arrival - Holman told his friend Tre (Alex Griffin-Griffiths) where they'll be, in case they need rescuing. Tre has decided to join them instead, and the third wheel's not too welcome an addition for Ina, who thinks Holman's best friend fancies her.

Theatre review: The Complaint

It's all a bit bombastic upstairs at Hampstead at the moment, but downstairs things are a whole lot quieter, and a great deal odder. Nick Whitby's The Complaint is set in an unspecified country - there's mostly a Middle-Eastern feel, but each character has a different international accent, sometimes even changing accent depending on who they're talking to. Afra (Zora Bishop) has an appointment in an office of "The Society," to discuss a complaint form she's submitted. The levels of bureaucracy she now encounters from a trio of administrators (Nathalie Armin, Peter Bankole and Callum Dixon) take her on a self-consciously Kafkaesque journey that takes in revolutionary politics, torture and the meaning of Art.