Theatre review: The Welkin

After adapting Chimerica for TV Lucy Kirkwood returns to the stage for a play that feels equally epic in ambition, even if instead of spanning continents this one is largely set in a single room. It does have its thoughts on the stars though, as The Welkin takes place in Suffolk in 1759, the year in which Edmond Halley had predicted the comet that would eventually bear his name would appear. It's a scientific discovery that's captured the imagination of people even in remote, small towns like this one, with everyone regularly mentioning it, hoping they might catch a glimpse of the celestial body. But if human knowledge is expanding to include the heavens, women like midwife Lizzy Luke (Maxine Peake) find that progress closer to home is much slower than they would like. Summoned grudgingly away from her laundry, Lizzy's expertise has had her requested by a local judge to take part in one of the few areas of Georgian law left to the judgement of women.

Theatre review: Husbands & Sons

The National's new epic is called Husbands & Sons but it's the wives and mothers - underappreciated and overbearing, respectively - who hold centre stage. Ben Power adapts three DH Lawrence stories of a coal-mining town between Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire in 1911, having them play out in parallel in a single neighbourhood. Three houses are marked out on Bunny Christie's in-the-round set: At the Holroyds', Lizzie (Anne-Marie Duff) is always saying she's finally had enough of her husband Charles (Martin Marquez,) an angry drunk who's not above stumbling home in the middle of the night with other women in tow. But she always takes him back, despite the efforts of the plant's electrician Blackmore (Philip McGinley,) even when he reveals he's in love with her, and his plan to help her escape with him to Spain.

Theatre review: Microcosm

Up-and-coming playwright Matt Hartley takes us to a hot, stuffy summer in a desirable part of London in Microcosm. At least, the area seems desirable when Alex (Philip McGinley) and his girlfriend Clare (Jenny Rainsford) move in, money left in his grandmother's will having meant Alex could afford somewhere nicer than a young couple might otherwise expect. But the suburban dream doesn't last long, and as well as an overly friendly neighbour who won't leave him alone, Alex is soon making enemies of a local gang of teenagers: Coming from a small town, it's not in his nature to stand by and ignore problems, so when one of the kids speeds on his motorbike down the residential road he confronts him - and finds himself targeted by a gang throwing bricks through his windows and posting turds in his letterbox.

Theatre review: Straight

There's a definite kinky theme developing to this week's theatregoing (how traumatic for me, I'm sure you're all thinking, given the famously prim and proper nature of my reviews.) After last night's definitely-not-gay shenanigans, tonight a play that takes a look at what it means to be Straight, by taking the very notion to its extreme. DC Moore has shown an ability to write not only powerful but quite varied plays with the likes of The Empire, Honest and The Swan (varied, but if they can be set in/actually take place in a pub, so much the better it seems.) This time he's taken as his inspiration a fairly recent film, Lynn Shelton's Humpday, to look at the platonic relationship between straight male friends, and in the process use it as a prism to look at men and women's relationships as well.