Theatre review: As Is

Another revival from the 1980s at the Finborough, and it's what they're billing as the first-ever AIDS play, William M. Hoffman's As Is. The play opens with a pair of exes arguing over who gets which of their shared possessions. But Rich (Tom Colley) is using the squabble as a delaying tactic for what he really needs to tell Saul (David Poynor,) namely that he's tested HIV positive. The following 80 minutes flash both back to their relationship and its end, and forward to Rich's deteriorating health - and the ex-boyfriend who still loves him remaining at his side as a constant support. As well as this personal story that carries the heart of the narrative through, Hoffman also spreads his focus out to the New York gay community at large - the liberated, promiscuous subculture of the 1970s that was so vulnerable to an unknown killer disease - and the support networks that they created in its wake.

Theatre review: Vieux Carré

Tennessee Williams' later work is ripe for rediscovery: Like Terence Rattigan, he fell out of favour with critics and public alike, but unlike Rattigan he doesn't seem to have let this get to him, and continued to have a prolific output. Having been rehabilitated as one of the greatest 20th century playwrights after his death, his early hit plays are now frequently revived, but perhaps due to lack of familiarity these little-loved, at the time, later works remain obscure but worthy of reevaluation. Dating from 1977, Vieux Carré, which is revived by Robert Chevara at the King's Head, has much in common with those early hit melodramas. But where The Glass Menagerie sees a Williams-substitute character in a family context, here the playwright's alter-ego, a nameless young Writer (Tom Ross-Williams) has fled the nest to New Orleans, to a crumbling boarding house in the titular district.