Theatre review: I'm Not Being Funny

Piers Black's accurately-titled I'm Not Being Funny begins with an interesting high concept: A mix of bleak drama and stand-up comedy, it follows young married couple Peter (Jerome Yates) and Billie (Transphobia Ltd Employee Tia Bannon) as they practice comedy routines in their living room, preparing for an open-mic night Billie has signed them up for. She thinks it could be a good form of couple's therapy for them, and at first it seems she might be trying to help Peter deal with his anxiety over never being able to make their three-year-old daughter laugh. As their attempts to build a "tight five" minutes each go on though we discover that the trauma they're dealing with is a lot more serious: Billie has a terminal disease and four to six years left to live, and the open mic is her way of dealing both with her own feelings, and how the news has impacted the relationship with her family.

Theatre review: Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner

One of the advantages of middle age is being able to more or less ignore anything to do with the Kardashians, but it's impossible to be online and not osmose some things about them. Funnily enough, one of those things is the specific headline that kicks off the events of Jasmine Lee-Jones' Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner: The preposterous statement that the titular enemy of the gays* was the youngest-ever "self-made" billionaire, as if the wealth, privilege and profile she was born into weren't a factor. For student Cleo (Danielle Vitalis) this is more than just ridiculous but also a slap in the face, as she considers Jenner's personal brand to be built on appropriating black looks and culture, something which has been particularly on her mind both as the subject of her dissertation; and because her ex just dumped her for a white woman with a Jenner-like tendency to appropriate black style.

Theatre review: The Winter's Tale (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse)

The Swanamaker's first all-Shakespeare season opened, very successfully, with two of his least-performed plays, but its second half brings two late plays that are much more popular - if not always with me. The regularity with which The Winter's Tale is revived is something I find a bit baffling, but every so often a production comes along to justify its popularity and, except for an overly hefty running time, Michael Longhurst's definitely fits into that category. John Light is Leontes, the king of Sicilia who's been best friends with his Bohemian counterpart Polixenes (Simon Armstrong) since childhood; until for no reason at all, he becomes convinced his wife Hermione (Rachael Stirling) is cheating on him with Polixenes, and tries to have both killed. He doesn't come back to his senses until it's too late, and has seemingly lost all his family. But his baby daughter has in fact survived and 16 years later Perdita (Tia Bannon) has the chance to make things right between the royal houses with her romance with Polixenes' son Florizel (Steffan Donnelly.)