Theatre review: Time and Tide

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: The press officially get invited tomorrow; I could only fit in a trip to this during the preview period.

Presented by Relish Theatre, a Norfolk-based company that aims to showcase creative talent from the regions, if James McDermott's Time and Tide is a love letter to the seaside town of Cromer it's a very subdued one. On the end of a pier that's slowly sinking, May (Wendy Nottingham) runs the failing café she inherited from her mother - but not for much longer. Local businesses have been closing up and selling off their shops to chains for the last few years, and May has someone from Pret a Manger coming to view the premises. But first she has a full Monday's work to get through with the help of her two assistants. She didn't even expect to see Nemo (Josh Barrow) today as he's due to get on a train at 6 to go to London and begin a drama course. But he wants to keep himself busy rather than spend his last day in town moping over the fact that his best friend didn't show up to his leaving drinks.

Theatre review: Chicken Dust

The conditions in which animals meant for cheap food are raised are something we probably wouldn't want to think about too much; but Ben Weatherill's play Chicken Dust isn't so much about the birds themselves, as about how the lives of the people who work there aren't much more fun than those of the doomed chickens. A student who's had to grab the first job going when his father gets ill, Tim (Christopher Hancock) arrives at a Leicestershire farm that's been taken over by a large corporation. Chicks that have been hatched elsewhere are transported there to be raised and fattened up in a barn, and when they're ready for slaughter it's his job to catch them. He joins a team two of whom, Freddie (Roger Alborough) and Val (Paddy Navin) had their own farms before falling on hard times and having to sell out to the same sort of company that now pays them minimum wage.