Theatre review: World's End

With its 1990s-set teenage gay romance in neighbouring flats of a London tower block (albeit in Chelsea rather than Thamesmead,) World’s End invites inevitable comparisons to Beautiful Thing. Actor James Corley’s playwriting debut lacks the relatable characters to have anything like the same impact on audiences, but it does have its moments. In late 1998, Viv (Patricia Potter) returns to London after two failed marriages and many years of constant moving around; she rents the tiny flat next to Ylli (Nikolaos Brahimllari,) an Albanian widower and once-aspiring artist who now takes odd jobs in security. Both have 19-year-old sons, Viv’s new one-bedroom flat meaning Ben (Tom Milligan) has to sleep in the living room, where he locks himself away most of the time playing on his new Playstation. Besnick (Mirlind Bega) is more socially confident, and while perhaps not technically out to his disapproving father seems unfazed by Ylli’s occasional digs at his effeminacy.

Theatre review: The Colby Sisters of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Canadian playwright Adam Bock had the idea of throwing together a group of roughly similar-looking actresses, who would normally be competing for the same roles and therefore rarely get to act together. He probably had specific New York-based actresses in mind as that's where he usually works, but a meeting with Indhu Rubasingham led to The Colby Sisters of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania getting its world premiere in London, at the Tricycle. Loosely modeled on the likes of the Mitfords and the Hiltons, the five Colby sisters are socialites who did, indeed, grow up in Pittsburgh, but sometime after their mother's death their father's fortunes greatly improved (perhaps by marriage, to the hated stepmother occasionally alluded to?) Now the sisters live in New York City, most of them married to artists and architects, and lead lives of vague celebrity: Famous for being famous, they're strangers to work but not to the pages of Vanity Fair.