Theatre review: Grace Pervades

Playing in the West End at the same time as one of his earlier plays that's starting to show its age, David Hare's latest one consciously harks back to an even older tradition of performance than Teeth'N'Smiles: Grace Pervades centres on the most celebrated actress of the Victorian theatre, Ellen Terry (Miranda Raison) and her longstanding professional and personal relationship with actor-manager Henry Irving (Rafe "Ralph" Fiennes.) The latter chose her as his leading lady when he was setting up his own theatre company, convincing her to come out of retirement after she'd decided she would never be as good an actress as her sister. But once they start working together it's Terry who has the bigger impact on him, helping an actor who was admired for his intensity but criticised for his stiffness, to find a style with more connection to castmates and audiences alike.

Theatre review: The Diary of a Teenage Girl

Southwark Playhouse puts comic books on stage again although we're in significantly darker territory than Usagi Yojimbo with Marielle Heller's The Diary of a Teenage Girl, which adapts Phoebe Gloeckner's graphic novel set in 1976 San Francisco. Minnie (Rona Morison) is 15, the same age her mother Charlotte (Rebecca Trehearn) was when she had her. She might not be adding another teenage pregnancy to the family but her own sexual awakening is far from healthy, as she's been seduced by her mother's seedy boyfriend Monroe (Jamie Wilkes.) It's an ongoing affair and although Minnie hasn't particularly fooled herself that it's love, she's still pretty smitten. With an out-of-her-depth mother fond of a number of recreational drugs, and a seemingly more sensible ex-stepfather, Pascal (Mark Carroll,) who writes her letters encouraging her to keep studying, but has something of a distant, academic interest in her himself, Minnie's left to find her own way.