Theatre review: Tiger Country

There's something of a mini-trend at the moment, of productions from about four years ago returning. At Hampstead there's Nina Raine's Tiger Country, which she once again directs on a wide traverse stage designed by Lizzie Clachan. A hospital drama with more than a little touch of the soap opera about it, it does in fact rise above what look like fairly generic beginnings. Young doctor Emily (Ruth Everett) transfers from Brighton to the Casualty department of a London hospital where her boyfriend James (Luke Thompson) also works - although he doesn't seem too keen on everyone knowing they have more than a working relationship. Emily is still heavily emotionally invested in her patients, in apparent contrast to Vashti (Indira Varma,) a surgeon whose colleagues joke has buried all trace of a personal life to help her progress in her job. But when her aunt (Souad Faress) is admitted to the hospital, Vashti finds it harder to maintain her stiff upper lip.

Theatre review: Man to Man

Manfred Karge's monologue Man to Man, translated by Anthony Vivis, sees a young couple marry in Germany a little before Hitler's rise to power. The marriage lasts barely over a year before Max dies of cancer. From a combination of needing the income, and wanting to keep her husband alive in some way, his widow (Tricia Kelly) dresses as a man and takes on Max's identity, and his job operating a crane. The deception seems to fool everyone, even getting him a young female admirer, but with war on the horizon Max has a dilemma: War means conscription for a young man, but if she returns to her former identity as Ella, she'll appear vulnerable at a time when plenty of men will be willing to take advantage. Man to Man follows Germany's history throughout World War II, the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall, through the eyes of a person whose identity - for most of that time at least - is male.

Theatre review: Responsible Other

Sometimes, it turns out, it actually is Lupus. At least it is for 15-year-old Daisy (Alice Sykes) who, in Melanie Spencer's Responsible Other, has the disease whose obscurity and mass of possible symptoms made it a weekly suspect for Dr House. Only a couple of years after her mother's death from cancer, Daisy has been diagnosed with the disease that turns the immune system against itself, and in her case is making kidney failure a real possibility. Weekly chemotherapy could help, but her father Peter (Andy Frame) is struggling to stay afloat as a single parent, and the trips from Northampton to St Thomas' Hospital would mean missing more work than he can afford to. In desperation he turns to the sister-in-law he hasn't seen since Daisy was a baby: Diane (Tricia Kelly) is a recluse with a history of mental illness, and the thought of accompanying the niece she barely knows to London is terrifying to her.