Theatre review: Morning

Phew! I'd been starting to get concerned about Simon Stephens' wellbeing, it must be nearly five minutes since he last premiered a new play. Here to reassure us of his continued existence is Morning, a new commission by the Lyric Hammersmith for its Young Company, first seen in Edinburgh last month. Billed as a "dark coming of age play," it follows the always eerily-smiling Stephanie (Scarlet Billham,) about to lose her mother to cancer and her best friend Cat (Joana Nastari) to university, and willing to go to insane extremes to try and keep her life from changing. In the play's central scene, she invites smitten boyfriend Stephen (Ted Riley) to the woods to surprise him with a threesome with Cat, but the girls soon find their sexual preferences have a violent edge.

Theatre review: Vera Vera Vera

The Veras in the title of Hayley Squires' debut play have nothing to do with The Shamen, but instead refer to the (basically quite similar) musical stylings of Dame Vera Lynn. Her songs play over the scene changes of Vera Vera Vera, the second and final full production in this year's Royal Court Young Writers Festival. The cast of five are split over two connected storylines: On the day of the funeral of Bobby, a soldier killed in Afghanistan, his sister Emily (Danielle Flett,) brother Danny (Tommy McDonnell) and best friend Lee (Daniel Kendrick) gather, bicker, and try to move on. Interspersed with their scenes is a story that happens a couple of weeks later: Charlie (Abby Rakic-Platt) and Sammy (Ted Riley) are a couple of teenage best friends. As Sammy prepares to meet a school bully for a fight, the two are forced to acknowledge their real feelings for each other.