Theatre review: Martine

You'd expect a play called Martine to be a biography of Ms McCutcheon, but I'm afraid we'll have to wait a little while longer for an onstage reenactment of that time she vomited in Mick Hucknall's hair. Instead Jean-Jacques Bernard’s play takes place in rural France in 1920, as Julien (Barnaby Sax) returns from the war to stay with his only living relative, his grandmother (Susan Penhaligon) in a small village. On the way he meets and falls for local simpleton Martine (Hannah Murray.) This is her moment, this is her perfect moment with him, and a fortnight of flirtation follows, but the arrival of Jeanne (Leila Crerar,) to whom he had once been promised, makes him long for the company of someone better-educated. Soon Julien and Jeanne are married, and Martine is left to either watch from next door and pine, or accept Alfred's (Chris Porter) unwanted proposal.

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.