Theatre review: Cyprus Avenue

Artistic Director Vicky Featherstone is currently directing both shows at the Royal Court, and both feature people's minds being fractured by paranoia. X might take us to the future in the main house but Upstairs Cyprus Avenue is dominated by the past, and the sectarian Troubles that have defined Northern Ireland for centuries. Black comedies don't come much blacker than David Ireland's play about Eric (Stephen Rea,) an Ulster loyalist who's spent his life fighting the IRA and hating all Catholics. Now there's a peace in which neither side got everything they wanted, and he's not sure what the country's identity is or, by extension, his own. This crisis has been bubbling under the surface until he sees his newborn granddaughter and becomes convinced that she's actually Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams in disguise, leading a charge to invade Protestant homes.

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: Mr Burns

Some shows come with such a Marmite reputation that it feels odd to find yourself quite firmly on the fence about them. Anne Washburn's Mr Burns had a love/hate response when it debuted off-Broadway, and the reaction to its London premiere has ranged from one star to five from the critics. Its basic conceit is certainly an interesting one: Some time in the near future, disasters at a series of nuclear power plants have wiped out most of the US population. The survivors are left to try and get by in a world without power (Mr Burns is subtitled "A post electric play.") Small groups band together for safety, and as one of these welcomes, cautiously, a newcomer (Demetri Goritsas,) we see the ways they've tried to maintain a network of communication. But we also see how they try to keep their spirits up by reliving a comforting story from their earlier lives: Around the fireside they try to remember and retell an episode of The Simpsons.