Theatre review: How The Other Half Loves

It's a phenomenon that's already certain to turn up in my theatrical memes of the year, and one nobody will be looking back on fondly: Theatres' insistence on programming long shows without an early start time to compensate for it. Adding its name to the National, Almeida and, worst offender, the Old Vic, the Theatre Royal Haymarket joins in with what seems almost spiteful scheduling: At just over two and a half hours, How The Other Half Loves is just longer-than-average rather than an epic, but an inexplicable 7:45pm start time makes sure nobody gets home before 11pm - if they're lucky. That unwelcome slice of 2016 aside, it's like any other year: If it's spring there must be an Alan Ayckbourn revival somewhere, and Memorable Actor Matthew Cottle must be in it. Vanessa loves Ayckbourn so she always gets an early birthday present she'll like, even if my own feelings about his work are more variable.

Theatre review: Breeders

Opening a new season for young producers at the St James Theatre is Ben Ockrent's new play Breeders, an appealing sitcom with a strong comedy cast. Self-help book writer Andrea (Tamzin Outhwaite) and family lawyer Caroline (Angela Griffin) are a well-off lesbian couple who've recently got married and bought a large fixer-upper house together, but with their biological clocks ticking they're starting to wish for a family to fill it with. Andrea's dream is that they can have what a straight couple does, a baby that shares both parents' DNA, but the only way to do that is for her brother Jimmy (Nicholas Burns) to be the sperm donor for Caro's pregnancy. He says yes, but when they can't agree over what his legal rights to the child will be the plan changes: He and his girlfriend Sharon (Jemima Rooper) will move in with the couple and they'll all raise the child together.

Theatre review: Raving

Actor Simon Paisley Day turns playwright with a familiar comic setup: Three couples go on what is meant to be a relaxing weekend together, but end up in one catastrophe after another, their friendships, and sometimes their relationships, tested. Ross (Robert Webb) is a PR man whose orange wife Rosy (Sarah Hadland) takes him at his word that he's blameless on the various occasions she's caught him with a half-naked au pair. They've rented a Welsh cottage and invited their friends Briony (Tamzin Outhwaite) and Keith (Barnaby Kay) to spend the weekend with them, in the hope that it'll help Briony, a fretful mother, relax. But her chances of calming down aren't helped when she realises that the braying Serena (Issy van Randwyck) and Charles (Nicholas Rowe) have also been invited, and when the latter couple's sexually-forward teenage niece crashes the party as well, the results range from awkward revelations to slapstick violence in Raving.