Written by Adam Usden, a member of the Royal Court Studio Group and a newly selected member of the Traverse 50, Steve and Then It Ended is set on the day of the apocalypse. This is a popular subject for filmmakers; all sorts of disaster and apocalypse themed films have been made in the past decade, particularly with all the end-of-the-world, Mayan-based fear-mongering that has been going on. While, of course, the world has not ended, this is still an interesting topic that brings notions of human mortality and the fragility of our world to the fore.

Adam Usden is a writer with a bright future, at least if this play is anything to go by. Steve and Then It Ended is written with a tenderness and accuracy that many a well-established playwright would be proud of. It takes an everyday setting – the kitchen and living room of an ordinary family house – and places it in the most extraordinary situation. Usden creates an awareness of an external reality while maintaining a painstakingly crafted focus on a beautiful domestic drama. We watch as the characters truly decide what is important in the last few hours of the world; it is darkly humorous, occasionally brutal and gripping from the off. Conceptually and in practice, this play succeeds. Usden is without a doubt one to watch for the future.

There are one or two more impenetrable moments, particularly Steve’s monologues (played by Matt Sutton), which are written in a rather different tone. However, they frame the piece well, with the main action told through a series of flashbacks. Steve opens the play marooned on an armchair, apparently unable to step off it for fear of some catastrophe. He is in a very different world from the main action of the play, with subtle shifts in lighting and delivery distinguishing it, and it remains unclear whether he is a survivor of the apocalypse, of if he is in some form of afterlife or limbo. Whichever you take it to be, it is not a pleasant image.

Jane Jeffery as Annie, the mother of the household, gives a standout performance. A particularly memorable moment is when she recalls her memory of the first time her son wore a shirt; at a Christmas dance at a local youth centre. This is a great example of how Usden and Jeffery both make the apparently mundane somehow beautifully poignant; how in the midst of the end of the world, the everyday suddenly feels so valuable. Paul Moss is exceptional as the gawky teenage son, Stan. Moss and Jeffery give stunning performances, building a heart-wrenchingly recognisable mother-son dynamic, so much so that it is hard to believe the two actors have not spent their lives together. Their truthful performances are extraordinarily touching.

Director Oscar Blustin has crafted a beautiful production, despite being at times a little too pacey and even if it does slip towards sentimentality. Ian Latimer’s naturalistic design is dressed with detail, creating the perfect ‘everyday’ setting. Blustin’s direction is simple and effective, and Usden’s script is quite rightly the main star of the show. The ending is a little too abrupt, which is a shame, but with a little more work this piece could be very special indeed.

Steve and Then It Ended is playing at Theatre503 until 19 January. For more information and tickets, see the Theatre503 website (www.theatre503.com).

Ailís Ní Ríain’s new play Desolate Heaven takes its audience for quite a ride in its debut at Theatre 503. Described as “a story of falling in love for the first time and a story about running away, a story about growing up too soon and about why love can sometimes be dangerous,” Desolate Heaven is a dynamic piece that struggles in its opening but is both thrilling and haunting by its conclusion.

When the play opens, it takes a few minutes to find its footing. When fiery and fearless 14-year-old Orlaith (Carla Langley) meets meek and impressionable 13-year-old Sive (Evelyn Lockley), the chemistry between the pair is undeniable. But then the play quickly jumps from organic dialogue to confusing, overlapping scenes in which the girls both act out the roles of their parents in simultaneous one-person dialogues while narrating their own inner monologues. In its first 15 minutes, the play seems confused about its own style – and leaves the audience fearing that the next hour and a half will be as disjointed as the multiple personalities the two girls just displayed. Luckily, however, the play quickly finds its flow and makes up for lost time, providing a compelling and unpredictable narrative when the two girls run away together.

After they set off, leaving their overly dependent and burdensome parents behind, Brid Brennan (a Tony Award Winner for her previous work in Dancing at Lughnasa) appears to help the girls along throughout different stages of their journey – first as a farmer, then a lorry driver and finally as a butcher. Her three characters are entertaining and intentionally puzzling, adding a mysterious element of fantasy as each character takes part in telling a Yeats story to the girls before bed on separate nights.

All three actresses are phenomenal in their demanding roles. Brid Brennan successfully salvages the moments in the play that could have easily been lost to abstraction, providing undoubtedly warm and loveable qualities to her eerily mystical characters. Evelyn Lockley is sweet and sincere as Sive, constantly experiencing a roller coaster of emotions that swerves between excitement, thrill and fear. Carla Langley reveals the perfect amount of hidden vulnerability in the stubborn and edgy Orlaith, allowing her headstrong façade to sometimes get betrayed by the unshed tears that build up in her frustrated eyes.

Set design by James Perkins is aesthetically pleasing, simple and perfectly adaptable, and Paul Robinson’s tight direction makes effective use of the levels it provides. While the storytelling in Ailís Ní Ríain’s play sometimes dances on the edge of becoming distractingly bizarre, this production overwhelmingly succeeds at providing a narrative that is both unique and completely captivating once it gets past its bumpy start.

Desolate Heaven is confusing and fascinating, tender and violent, honest and mystical. There’s a lot to take in and its conclusion really sticks with you. While it’s not consistently flawless, the play’s strongest moments are delivered with a force that is rarely matched on any London stage, making for a worthwhile and enthralling evening.

Desolate Heaven plays at Theatre 503 until 2 March 2013. For more information and to book tickets, visit Theatre 503’s website.

Cul-De-Sac, the first play from stand-up comic Matthew Osborn is not the sort of show you’d usually expect to see at Theatre503. Plumbing the darker depths of suburbia, this is a snappy satire on leafy Home Counties living. Tightly written, sharply witty and unremittingly black humoured, Cul-De-Sac is not everyone’s cup of tea, but is an entertaining evening.

Cul-De-Sac’s three-man cast is made up of Julian Dutton (Dr. Cole), Alan Francis (Tim) and Mike Hayley (Nigel), all – like writer Matthew Osborn – experienced stand-ups and comic writers. It’s a strong cast, and the trio handle the style with alacrity and energy. This is a show that teaches you how to watch it, and once the mind has adjusted to the quick-fire, absurd dialogue, it is, at its best, sparkling comedy.

However, the sharp, slick quality of this show is also part of the reason why it didn’t wholly do it for me. Cul-De-Sac is described by ThreeWeeks as “Alan Bennett meets The League of Gentlemen“: in some ways an accurate epithet, but this show lacks any of Bennett’s heart, warmth or depth of emotion. This is more a series of sketches with a neat, reflexive plot than a play. When Tim discovers his dog has been kicked to death by his neighbour Nigel, he is largely unmoved. Later in the play, even once we have become accustomed to the lack of emotional engagement, it comes as something of a surprise that Tim is angry rather than moved or saddened by the disintegration of his family.

That said, Cul-De-Sac is clearly not trying or pretending to be a naturalistic analysis of neighbourly relationships. Osborn’s glib handling of the gradual destruction of his protagonist, and his characters’ flippant reactions to diabolical circumstance, generate many of the best laughs of the piece. Gags abound, and the excruciating darkness of the plot was enough to keep me gripped, to a point. Alan Francis’s Tim spends one scene tied up and seduced by his doctor, and Mike Hayley’s Nigel’s grim relaxation method is deliciously skin-crawling. This is greatly enhanced throughout by Nick Pynn’s masterful musical underscore, helping to ramp up the tension.

Overall, if you like dark comedy without too much weight behind it, this is certainly worth seeing. There are some genuinely brilliant jokes in there and the commitment of the company makes up for occasionally slap-dash moments. A few scene changes are too long, enhancing the sketch-show feel of the whole evening.

Cul-De-Sac is entertaining, sharp and sparkling like a pair of newly polished pruning shears, and provides a diverting evening of classically British black comedy. Just don’t expect to be moved.

Cul-de-sac runs at Theatre 503 until 5 January. For more information and tickets see the Theatre503 website.

Theatre 503, a small stage above the Latchmere pub on Battersea Park Road, has a reputation for staging provocative new writing. Led since 2006 by Artistic Directors Tim Roseman, who left the theatre in September of this year, and Paul Robinson, the theatre’s most notable success has been The Mountaintop written by Katori Hall, a fictional depiction of Martin Luther King’s last hours which transferred to the West End and won an Olivier Award for Best New play in 2010. Theatre 503 certainly has no qualms about pushing boundaries, staging shows like Porn: The Musical and Take Two Every Four Hours which discusses terminal illness, and allowing first-time writers space and freedom to experiment.

Papercut Theatre’s XY falls within this long tradition of original, challenging new plays. Four authors were chosen to write a short play for three actors, without denoting the gender of their characters, and six directors were selected to stage one of the plays as they saw fit. The sequence opens with Tobias Wright’s Spineless which explores when office politics gets nasty and sexual harassment accusations get used as a bargaining tool. It’s an entertaining opener, although Director Bruce Adams makes the gender-play is too obvious by casting the oppressive boss as a stereotypical bossy career-woman, and the quality of acting is poor, with the exception of Daniel Ward as the unfortunate employee.

The next offerings, Sara Pascoe’s The Endings and German Munoz’s Hopelessly Devoted to You, are the two which are repeated in the second half under another director. This introduces an interesting tension between writing and directing, although the differences are so subtle that I feel more freedom or more imagination on the part of the directors would have produced greater engagement and significance. Unfortunately, such repetition with very little variation suggested comparison between the competence of the actors more than anything else, creating a competition in which the far stronger performances in Director Rebecca Manson Jones’ The Endings and Director Amanda Castro’ Hopelessly Devoted to You stood out.

Discussing fetishes about disabilities and wheelchair users, Hopelessly Devoted to You brings up unusual, contemporary issues about acceptance and relationships, while The Endings is a wonderfully absurd tale of three kids, Biggy, Normal and Tiny who live in a strange world inhabited by the violent Egg and mysterious Spoon. These two nicely discuss the issue of gender; the category of male or female seems unimportant and ambiguous in the characters of Biggy, Normal and Tiny, while the two versions of Hopelessly Devoted to You make an important point by comparing the relationship between two lesbians and a straight couple and challenging how this changes our perceptions of the situation. The points raised here are fascinating, but ultimately cannot make up for the variable quality of acting and the tediousness of repeating two very similar versions of two plays. If you’re a huge fan of Groundhog Day, you’ll love it. If not, stay well away.

XY was at Theatre 503 on 9 and 10 December 2012. For more information visit the Papercut Theatre website.