Theatre review: French Without Tears

The Rattigan revival remains in such full swing it seems insane he vanished from the stage for so long. And given how well plays like French Without Tears hold up, it feels downright criminal. The playwright has a knack for understated heartbreak but while there's glimpses of that here, we're mainly in full-on, mischievous comic mode. The setting is the rural French home of Professor Maingot (David Whitworth,) where young Englishmen - usually those hoping to become diplomats - can spend a few months learning the language from him and his daughter. Kenneth (Patrick McNamee,) nicknamed Babe as he's the youngest, has brought along his sister, and she's caused a stir among the other students. As the story begins she's swearing love to Kit (Joe Eyre,) but when Bill (William Belchambers,) a Navy Commander joins their class, he catches her eye too.

Theatre review: Hindle Wakes

"It isn't fair, but it's usual." Stanley Houghton's story of the small industrial Lancashire town of Hindle, where three families are trying to avoid scandal, has been seen as a classic proto-feminist play, and apparently when first produced Hindle Wakes proved controversial. Given a fairly light-hearted revival at the Finborough Theatre by Bethan Dear, it's still possible to see how it could have put people's backs up in 1912, with its cheeky asides about the suffragettes amid a surprisingly modern attitude to female sexuality. When the friend who was meant to provide her alibi meets with a tragic accident, Fanny's (Ellie Turner) weekend away with mill owner's son Alan Jeffcote (Graham O'Mara) is exposed. If word gets out that Fanny's a "ruined woman" nobody will marry her, so her father Christopher (Peter Ellis) is dispatched to get Alan to do the "decent thing." But there's a complication as Alan's long been engaged to another woman.