All a bit Blackadder: Hamlet, at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, reviewed

Never Not Once has a cold and forbidding title but it starts as an amusing tale set in an LA apartment. We meet Allison, a happily married lesbian, whose grown-up daughter, Eleanor, arrives with a hunky new boyfriend to show off. This set-up has the makings of a flatshare sitcom. You combine a straight younger couple with an older pair of lesbians and you throw in the mother/daughter relationship for extra instability. It could be a laugh. But a new wrinkle appears. Eleanor learns that she was conceived during a one-night stand and she decides to track down her absentee father. But he’s extremely reluctant to discuss what happened that evening. Too much booze, he shrugs, and the major details escape him. Flora disagrees with this version. Eleanor’s father raped her, she claims. Wow. This frothy comedy has turned into a heavyweight examination of consent and coercion. It develops into a poignant knife-edge drama which delivers an excellent ending. The characters discover the nobility of forgiveness and the harmful futility of vengeance.

It’s unusual to find a play that could do with opening itself up a bit, breathing more, taking its time, and exploring the characters further. (The tame boyfriend is a dud who could benefit from extra investigation.) The playwright, Carey Crim, is a gifted comedian who may have suppressed her natural humour in the hope of pleasing a handful of mirthless and puritanical commentators. If so, that mistake should be corrected.

An Evening Without Kate Bush is a song medley delivered by a lifelong fan, Sarah-Louise Young, who first imitated her idol at school in the 1990s. Kate Bush is now her vocation and she takes the show to festivals and small venues around the country.