The Female of the Species - TNT


No wonder Germaine Greer was incensed by fellow Aussie Joanna Murray-Smith's portrayal of a fictional feminist writer, Margot Mason, held hostage (like Greer herself several years ago) by a disgruntled ex-student who believes Mason's writing has completely wrecked her life.
Anna Maxwell Martin's obsessive, gun-toting intruder and Margot's stressed-out housewife daughter are just two of the uninvited visitors who find their way to the academic's isolated country home and reveal the inconsistencies in her influential theorising.
Eileen Atkins is always watchable as the handcuffed author of The Cerebral Vagina, and the arrival of a bearded taxi driver adds a belated whiff of testosterone to this comic exposure of the post-feminist confusion of both sexes.
Vaudeville Theatre, WC2 (0870-040 0084). Until October 4. £27.50-£47.50

High School Musical - TNT

Arriving at the Apollo Hammersmith is rather like gate-crashing a pre-teen birthday party. The foyer is full of excited little girls waving cheerleader pompoms and ready to stay up way past their bedtime. They probably all know the story inside out, but that hardly matters - Disney's lively, cleaned-up derivative of "Grease" won't win any points for originality and the phenomenal success of the made-for-TV original is sure to guarantee an enthusiastic school holiday audience.
It's not just the plot that lacks novelty as new girl maths geek Gabriella and basketball star Troy navigate the pitfalls of continuing a holiday romance back at Albuquerque's East High, where the divide between Brainiacs and Jocks seems an insurmountable barrier. The choreography backs away from hints of freshness, too – when basketballs crash from the ceiling, the dance routine which incorporates them has barely started before it's over (surely young attention spans aren't quite that limited?)
But the colours are bright, the dialogue (though cheesily unsubtle) is delivered with the same gusto as the energetic dance numbers and I must admit to a soft spot for a couple of the minor characters - scurrying, apologetic Kelsi with her problematic new glasses and bitchy drama queen Sharpay's camp twin brother Ryan. The kids in the audience loved it with its "follow your dreams" message, but unencumbered adults would do better to head elsewhere in search of musical fulfilment.
Apollo, Hammersmith, Queen Caroline Street, W6 (0844-847 2397/0871-386 1122) Until August 31. £45-£10

50 Ways to Leave Your Lover - TNT

It's mostly fun, but to make sure you don't forget the heartbreak involved, there's a sprinkling of truly poignant episodes in this hour long show inspired by audience stories of breaking up and moving on. Most devastating of all is Claire Keelan as a young junkie about to turn hooker in a desperate effort to keep hold of her exploitative "boyfriend." Ralf Little is touching, too, as he delivers a sad little monologue counting down the seconds since the end of his relationship, and he's also suitably street in a witty rap number aimed at his two-timing girlfriend.
There's a running gag in which, over decades, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith's attempts to read his bedtime book are constantly thwarted by his partner's unstoppable interruptions, plus a farmer in love with his cow and a young woman (Michelle Terry) unceremoniously dumped by text after she's spent the half the evening, immaculately groomed, waiting for her louse of a date to turn up.
Five writers and director Anthea Williams have concocted an enjoyable mix of scenes, sketches and swift one-liners and come perilously close to convincing all those singletons out there that – even when they think they may have found Mr or Miss Right – the hunt just might not prove worth the effort.
Bush Theatre, Shepherds Bush Green, W12 (020-8743 5050). Until August 9. £13

Afterlife - TNT

When Michael Frayn is on form, his plays are hard to beat for intelligence and wit. But, every so often, he comes up with a clunker. Although the National's resources succeed in dressing up this homage to extravagant impresario Max Reinhardt (1873-1943), beneath its opulent, baroque surface (and despite a fine central performance from Roger Allam) it's hard to warm to the script's intellectual games.

Reinhardt wanted to break down the boundaries between life and art, and Frayn forces parallels between his situation as an Austrian Jew by integrating rhyming chunks of Everyman (the medieval morality play that he staged annually at Salzburg). But the production repeatedly hammers home the message without illuminating the characters and the result is dramatically underpowered.

Lyttelton at the National, South Bank, SE1 (020-7452 3000). Until August 30. £10-£14.

Hangover Square - TNT

Fidelis Morgan's adaptation does an excellent job of distilling the essence of Patrick Hamilton' s dark 1941 novel – and designer Alex Marker more than matches her vision with an extraordinarily atmospheric transformation of this tiny space. Rain trickles down a sloping glass roof, a streetlamp nuzzles against the audience seating, and empty bottles clutter the ledges of dingy saloon bar, cheap Brighton hotel and sleazy lodging house as George Harvey Bone listens to the voices in his head telling him to kill failed actress Netta Longdon.

Set in Earls Court just before the outbreak of war,Gemma Fairlie's excellent production conjures a seedy world of drifting pointlessness in which the obsessed Bone hovers, humiliated, on the edge of her boozy crowd, an object of scorn who's always left to pick up the tab.The device of splitting the role of Netta between two actresses emphasises the turmoil in Bone's troubled brain and Matthew Flynn plays him with the dazed, desperate look of the borderline alcoholic, unable to distinguish between reality and his unfulfilled desires.

Finborough, Finborough Road, SW10. (0844-847 1652). Until August 2. Tickets £13 (£9 Tuesdays).

Fanshen - TNT

Full marks to the enterprising Theatredelicatessen for securing a temporary home at a central London location just a stone's throw from Oxford Circus.The building is scheduled for redevelopment and (although a smart commissionaire is still in situ in the entrance lobby) the space in which this slice of Chinese history unfolds has, appropriately, already been stripped to the floorboards. The audience sits on bare wooden benches, or hard sackcloth covered seats to watch the peasants of Long Bow village deal with the changes brought about by the overthrow of the feudal system and its replacement by what was intended to be a communist utopia.

David Hare's 1975 Brechtian style docu-drama, interesting though it is, proves pretty heavy-going as it demonstrates how the less attractive aspects of human nature (greed, corruption, the desire for vengeance) undermine the idealism behind this period of land reform from 1945 – 1949.It's all very earnest and very worthy and the cast are obviously committed. But although Hare opens a window on another culture, it proves hard to engage with so many briefly sketched characters, so many community meetings and so little actual drama.

295 Regent Street, London W1. (07708 740913). Until August 3. Tickets £12 (£10 concessions).

HARPER REGAN - This is London

In an already fragile situation, the imminent death of a parent sends 41 year old middleclass Harper right off the rails in Simon Stephens' episodic new play. In a series of often slightly bizarre encounters, it follows her as, without a word, she walks out on her family and disappears back to her Manchester roots to visit, too late, her dying father.
There's a fascinating, emotionally disjointed quality to the distinct scenes which, physically, merge fluidly into one another as Hildegard Bechtler's economical but atmospheric set glides and rotates to create yet another anonymous environment – the Uxbridge office where her disconcertingly weird boss refuses to give her compassionate leave because the timing isn't onvenient; the canal bridge on which she engages a bemused young student in conversation; a vast two-storey hotel room where she arranges to meet Brian Capron's gentlemanly stranger in search of no-strings extra-marital sex.

In the pivotal role of Harper, Lesley Sharp gives a riveting performance of desperation and troubled vulnerability as she confronts her estranged mother (Susan Brown), then imparts the truths she herself hadn't wanted to hear to her own teenage daughter (excellent Jessica Raine). And, as Harper's personal odyssey draws to an end and the strains her husband's actions have put on the whole family are acknowledged, Marianne Elliott's sympathetic, well-acted production finally suggests that her journey has, perhaps, brought them all to a more comfortable place of acceptance and a workable future.
Cottesloe Theatre.
Louise Kingsley