Theatre review: This Is My Family

First seen in Sheffield in 2013, Tim Firth's (book and music) This Is My Family has taken twelve years to make it to London, and after seeing Vicky Featherstone's production at Southwark Playhouse I have to wonder: Why the rush? Nicky (Nancy Allsop) is a 13-year-old girl who's entered a competition to explain why her family is perfect, and has told the truth, but left out a few salient details: Parents Steve (Michael Jibson) and Yvonne (Gemma Whelan) have been together since they were 16, but they're drifting apart and Steve is considering taking a job in Abu Dhabi. Older brother Matt (Luke Lambert) used to be very close to her but now he's having a teenage druid phase and obsessing over his girlfriend. And grandmother May (Gay Soper) has the mischievous side she describes, but she's now also got fast-encroaching dementia.

Theatre review: Kinky Boots

If it's one of the biggest new musical openings of the year, then chances are Killian Donnelly's involved: He plays Charlie, who's been trying to escape Northampton all his life, and has finally moved to London with his girlfriend when he gets news of his father's sudden death. He's left behind the shoe factory that's been in their family for generations, but once he gets his hands on the books Charlie realises the factory is failing. The only solution is to close it, and put the staff he's known all his life out of a job, unless he can find a new niche market for the company to specialise in. A chance encounter with drag queen Lola (Matt Henry) provides just that; soon Price & Son are exclusively manufacturing Kinky Boots, in Harvey Fierstein (book) and Cyndi Lauper's (music & lyrics) adaptation of Geoff Deane and Tim Firth's hit 2005 film.

Theatre review: Neville's Island

Plugging a couple of months' hole in the Duke of York's programme is a seemingly last-minute transfer from Chichester: Neville's Island, Tim Firth's spoof of "stranded in nature" stories like Lord of the Flies. Four middle-managers from a Salford mineral water company are on a team-building expedition in the Lake District, but having elected Neville (Neil Morrissey) as team captain, he misreads the instructions and lands them on a tiny, uninhabited island downriver. Thanks to Angus' (Miles Jupp) seemingly bottomless rucksack they have no end of supplies, except for anything they might actually need - like food. After Roy (Robert Webb) had a nervous breakdown followed by a religious conversion, the others treat him with kid gloves in fear of setting him off again; everyone except Gordon (Adrian Edmondson) that is, whose default reaction to everything is sarcasm and disdain.