There's always a glimmer of excitement when a new British musical arrives on the scene, we wonder if we'll discover the next Lloyd Webber and if we'll find a show to celebrate.

Merrie Hell, which features the writer of Jerry Springer, Richard Thomas, is a much more intimate affair than the opera. It's also a lot sleazier. But it's still got the same sledge-hammer approach to the delicate issue of faith, politics and sexuality.

A perfectionist, Jack forever perceives imperfections in past work. 'I wish there was a button I could push to right the wrongs, but I don't consciously try to steer myself away from imperfections in my writing. I just write.'

This is the house that Heidi built. We're sitting in Lavender House on Gayton Road, Heidi Locher's London home, set far back from the road behind a high gate, a temple to Modernism hidden between the Victorian walls of her Hampstead neighbours.

A bespectacled scientist stumbles onto the stage and introduces a celebrity hypnotist; it all spirals out of control, chaos ensues, a man ends up dead, setting the tone nicely for an evening of surrealism and absurdism.

The Ukraine has, long before the England football team's fantastic visions of the semi-finals, been the subject of another sort of vision.

Twenty-four hours ago I was a naïve child: I knew nothing of the domestic storage world, nothing of the joys of effective food preservation... in short, compressible Tupperware was yet to touch not only my hands, but my very soul. Such was the selling prowess and stage authority of Dixie and her Tupperware Party.

'We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us': John Keats' self-assured proclamation is nakedly emblazoned across two large projection screens, ...

I don't remember a great deal about 7 Day Drunk. This may be the most ill advised opening sentence to a review ever, but stay with me if you can. I don't remember a great deal about 7 Day Drunk because, like a lamb to the liver slaughter, I got 'involved'.