Regular reviews of new London theatre, from the West End and the National Theatre to the fringe, plus occasional dispatches from around the UK and beyond.

A touch too neat

Despite the technical prowess, there is something missing here. The writing is too flashy for its own good and as the metaphors pile up and the recurring motifs keep on recurring, Bovel’s style starts to overtake his content. The dialogue becomes forced, the characters a touch too neat and the plot-twists a tad convenient.

A gluttony of riches

Agboluaje refuses to patronise his audience with an easy way into this foreign world, and chooses to let life loose on-stage rather than merely represent it. The result is a show that might confuse at moments, but is also engaging, tangible and real.

Tribute to a fading England

Inspired by the insolvency of MG Rover of 2005 and the subsequent dissolution of the Longbridge car manufacturing plant in Birmingham, Stan’s Cafe mourn a past more honest, more human, before community was surpassed by communication.

The female eunuch castrates herself

Even after half of her audience has left at her behest Young continues in the same vein. There is no reward for sticking with her, only more of the same aggro-feminism. Solo is uncomfortable and challenging viewing that hits all sorts of targets with unswervingly accuracy and power, but one can’t help but think that there must be another way.

Period clothing and periwigs

It’s all, like, well fucking confrontational, yeah? Only constant confrontation becomes, at best, tiresome and tedious. The main problem – and there are many – is that Ann Liv Young’s form is so noisy it drowns out any possibility of genuine content. Her work is so nihilistic that it is devoid even of nihilism.

Bloody great swaying

Yes, Mussorgsky (played by a sternly dramatic Edward Hogg) dedicated this composition to a man, but what exactly does the flashing of male arses and waving of huge dildos tell us of the composer’s life in 19th century Russia?

Storming drama

Instead of the black and white moral impositions risked by any work with political and environmental issues at its core, and instead of force-fed ambiguity, there is a very touchable likeness, and sympathy for everyone involved.

Watery drama

As funny as lots of this is, I’m still not that fussed about climate change. Let Steve Waters write what he knows and write it better - but find a different way of bringing science to life on-stage.

Delicate material

The play works best when Radstrom keeps things simple – when he lets Bulger’s murderers account for their own actions in their own words – but he repeatedly interrupts the action, steps outside his play and starts to deconstruct it.

Relinquish the real!

The best scenes hover between life and death – all mystery, loneliness and despair. If only True Fiction had confined their play to this eerie twilight, but some heavy-handed comedy and clunky modern-day references (terrorism anyone?), cut through the gloom and let the audience off lightly.

Stamping, beaming tragedy

Is the best the Globe can do – simply stretch out the text, mine it for jokes and to hell with the consequences? All of Shakespeare’s tragedies are cloaked in comedy, but the jokes are surely not an end in themselves. The laughs are there to open the audience up, break down their guard so the drama can pierce them in the heart when they least expect it

A tiny orchestra

Whitemore’s main innovation was to distribute the role of self-deprecating narrator and protagonist among three different Simons, played in this production by Jasper Britton, Felicity Kendal and Nicholas Le Prevost. On paper, this may sound unappealing, but on stage it actually works very well as a way to render the dynamic and un-lecturing, improvising style of the diaries.

A safety valve on a dodgy boiler

Perhaps this lack of a narrative centre would be less perceivable if Reg, who is the core of the piece, were a thoroughly convincing character - but he is not really. For a man who believes himself to be the best thing that happened to proletariat since Marx, he is considerably spoiled and aloof.

Personal shambles

Though the programme notes protest otherwise, Panic is not about the satyric divinity Pan. Rather, it is about McDermot himself. Indeed, he is on such personal and confessional form that you almost feel bound by audience-patient confidentially.

Long-gone adolescences

It is in the transition between trivialities and moments of high emotion however where Ash really shines. Adam’s relationship with his grandfather and response to his grandmother’s death are presented with great sensitivity and power and the tears glistening in Ash’s eyes are immensely evocative.