Theatre review: Ticking

TV and film writer Paul Andrew Williams makes his stage debut with Ticking, a play that seems to take inspiration from Michael Wall's 1986 play Amongst Barbarians but then takes its dark theme off into a weirdly domestic direction. Simon (Tom Hughes) is a middle-class Englishman in his twenties who's been found guilty of murdering a prostitute in China. He's always protested his innocence but after four years in a Chinese prison he faces execution by firing squad at midnight. With a few hours to go and his American lawyer (David Michaels) desperately trying to get a last-minute reprieve, Simon's parents (Anthony Head and Niamh Cusack) arrive to spend a final hour with their son. They find him angry and frustrated, unsurprisingly, but instead of his captors his anger seems to be directed at them, and especially his father.

Theatre review: Versailles

The Donmar Warehouse weighs in on the centenary of World War I, but although this year marks a century from the outbreak of hostilities, Peter Gill's new play takes us to the Treaty of Versailles, which marked the War's end. Or, as is generally believed, it failed to put a full stop to anything, instead laying the foundations for World War II, and that's certainly how Gill's Versailles sees things. It focuses on Leonard (Gwilym Lee,) a civil servant whose job in Westminster meant he didn't see active service, and who is now on his way to Paris to play a small part in the treaty. Having some knowledge of the world's coal reserves, he's been brought in to advise on how Germany's coal resources are to be distributed in reparation. Those around him want to see Germany's assets bled dry, but Leonard fears catastrophic financial instability if that happens, and hopes he can promote a more lenient approach.