Many months ago on my daily commute through Finsbury Park station I noticed the beginnings of a renovation project on a decrepit, old building. The reason why I noticed it was because it had my favourite word on it: theatre. As a diehard local, it excited me no end that a slice of the arts world was coming to my doorstep.

I explored my passion for theatre with much support and funding from relatives by joining youth groups across the city, which changed my life. The idea that something similar is being created at such an accessible location, only 15 minutes from the centre of London, is phenomenal. To my knowledge, none of the local schools are private ones and many of these schoolchildren use Finsbury Park Station every day, so we can hope that they too, like me, will be drawn to a world that previously seemed impenetrable. Offering that opportunity to so many others is a commendable project.

The play itself, These Shining Lives directed by Loveday Ingram, however, was a little underwhelming. Based on a true story, the tale itself is an inspiration; four young women buck the 1920s stereotype of living to be housewives, to instead get a job.In Chicago, Illinois, Radium Dials is a watch-making company paying these women “easy money” at $8 a day to paint the numbers on the watch faces using radium, so that the displayed time shines in the dark. Charity Wakefield, as our brave heroine Catherine Donahue, takes those first valiant steps into the working world and revels in the enjoyment of her independence and newfound friendships.

Many of the problems Donahue incurs upon her foray into what was previously a man’s world are unfortunately no different to today. The threat her loving husband Tom, played by the charming Alec Newman, feels when she gets her first taste of success, the maternal guilt of not being the primary caregiver to her children, office politics and corporate bullying.

However, when Donahue and her colleagues slowly discover the effects of radium ingestion, their true colours shine through and their subsequent actions are a testament to the women’s liberation movement. Mainly narrated by Wakefield as Donahue, the play is touching but seems to lack a little reality, I felt more could have been made of the company’s corporate responsibility and the result is too predictable to get completely swept up into.

Supporting actress Honeysuckle Weeks was lovely in her rare glimpses of humanity as the otherwise brittle Charlotte. Lighting and backdrop of the stage, however, were incredible. The sky felt alive and the moving lake complete with reflections were enhanced perfectly by the musical choices. The creatives, Victor Craven, Tim Shortall and Rob Casey, truly transported you back to the twenties.

I have no doubt that Park Theatre will thrive. I only hope that it’s the first of many more theatres to come.

These Shining Lives is playing at Park Theatre until 9 June. For more information and tickets, see The Park Theatre website.

It’s turning out to be good year for American playwrights in British theatre. No sooner has the curtain come down on the Royal Court Theatre‘s production of Bruce Norris’s The Low Road, then Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer-Prize winning Disgraced is set to open at the Bush. Then, we have David Mamet’s Race at the Hampstead and a new play by Daniel Henry Hwang soon to debut at the Park theatre. While differing largely in both form and content, they nonetheless each share a willing ambition to address some rather meaty subject matter: the roots of modern capitalism, culture and religion in the twentieth century and well, race, respectively.

By comparison, Amy Herzog’s 4000 Miles is a curiously subdued affair; a mournful chamber piece occasionally buoyed by flashes of humour. It’s a play peopled with characters attempting to recall the past, but it often lapses into sentimentality. The problem with 4000 Miles is that the issues it sets out to explore are addressed too diffusely. Herzog’s writing demonstrates a tenderness and humanity, but she fails to sustain a dialogue with the wider conflicts she sets out early on in the play.

Set in the very recent past, the story begins when 21-year-old Leo (Daniel Boyd) arrives unannounced in the dead of night on his grandmother’s doorstep. Vera (Sara Kestleman) is 91, a dyed-in-the-wool communist and has lived alone in her rent-controlled Manhattan apartment ever since the death of her husband, Jo. Leo is an insouciant pot-smoking hippy returned from a cross-country bike ride gone horribly awry. Over the course of one month, Leo and Vera reminisce and bicker like an old married couple; both feel adrift and unable to pin down their own sense of purpose. They chatter about the past, family, politics and sex, until Leo’s estranged girlfriend Bec (Jenny Hulse) shows up, prompting more conversations about the past, family, politics and sex… etc. 4000 Miles is a play preoccupied with looking back, the clash of generations that is exemplified through Leo and Vera’s relationship should be grounds for great drama, but it’s dissipated by the play’s lack of forward momentum. By the end of the play, I was left wondering whether the vague sense of loss that plagues Leo and Vera had somewhere spilled over into the fabric of the play itself.

The acting is strong overall, but particularly praise must go to Kestelman as Vera Joseph; a volatile concoction of compassion and cynicism, she communicates Vera’s frailty with remarkable sensitivity. Boyd is understated as the listless Leo, his naïve, boyish charm serving as a suitable foil for Vera’s world-weary wisdom.

Despite the play’s shortcomings, James Dacre’s staging is thoughtful and considered; Simon Kenny’s design is a pleasure to behold – Vera’s apartment has been meticulously researched and communicates a whole interior life through a sophisticated attention to detail. The Print Room’s intimate, end-on staging is perfectly suited to the domestic interiority of the play, having made a very clean transition from the Theatre Royal Bath’s Ustinov Studio.

4,000 Miles is playing at the Print Room until 1 June. For more information and tickets, see the Print Room website.

Playing with Grown Ups centres around a couple in their late 30s, trying to adjust to their new roles as first time parents. Robert (Ben Caplan) takes to parenthood naturally, whereas Joanna (Trudi Jackson) is presented as frazzled and overwhelmed by her new responsibilities. An exhausted Joanna is far from pleased to hear that her husband has invited their old university friend, Jake, round for dinner.

Silver-haired Jake (Shane Attwooll) arrives with his date Stella (Daisy Hughes) a girl who is young enough to be his daughter. As the group poke fun at Stella’s idealistic view of the world, their evening is repeatedly interrupted by the baby crying offstage. Joanna’s irritation at this incessant crying is apparent, an irritation which escalates as the evening progresses until she finally erupts shrieking that she cannot cope anymore. As she expresses sentiments of feeling trapped and invisible it soon becomes clear that Joanna is suffering from severe post-natal depression.

Portraying gritty realism on stage can be tricky, but this production achieves it effortlessly. The entire play is confined to the couple’s living room, and thanks to Simon Scullion’s design and naturalistic performances from the entire cast it genuinely feels like you’re eavesdropping on a group of old friends. As the wine flows this group of university chums reflect on how the aspirations they had when they were students compare to the reality of what their lives have become.

I found Hannah Patterson’s female characterisation particularly interesting, for instance her use of monologues to reveal that despite appearing to be a happy-go-lucky carefree teenager Stella’s home life is also rather troubled. I thought that Hughes’s portrayal of Stella was both endearing and accomplished. I also found Jackson’s depiction of Joanna breakdown to be truly poignant, fighting back the tears to explain that since becoming a mother she feels like she lost all sense of identity. To have a mother refer to child as a terrible mistake is difficult to hear, but for me encapsulates the bleak despair that many women suffering from post-natal depression must feel daily.

Parents often refer to having children as being a big sacrifice, suddenly having to put another person’s needs before your own. Playing with Grown Ups explores the emotional and physiological effect that this sacrifice has on a parent.

Playing With Grown Ups is playing at Theatre 503 until 8 of June, for more information and tickets visit www.theatre503.com.

Josephine, Boris and Sistahl are putting on a play with some songs in it. As they pile onto the stage, tripping over each other like children doing a show for their parents, they admit that it is going to be about anorexia – but they don’t want that to put us off. In this charming ensemble piece, Olivier-nominated Caroline Horton has turned a complex personal story into a piece of theatre that is not only funny, sad and entertaining in its own right, but which brings something genuinely helpful to the dialogue surrounding anorexia.

Mess draws on Horton’s own experiences of suffering from an eating disorder, using these to tell the story of Josephine, a university student who has been plagued for years by a mixture of nerves, anxiety and full-blown panic – but who has discovered that rigidly controlling what she eats helps her to keep calm. She makes charts, listing the meals she will eat that week along with their calorie count, so that she is able to monitor her calorie intake across the whole week; she also records her exercise and her slowly decreasing weight. The pages of colour-coded numbers help her to feel that she is in control.

This is a piece that draws on the most understandable, relatable elements of Josephine’s illness – her desire to control things, her perfectionism – and shows how an eating disorder can grow from them, how these qualities become disfigured as Josephine’s illness disfigures her body. Horton and her cohorts are fully aware of the occasional absurdities of anorexia, as well as the fact that for some people it manifests as something of an obsession, a kind of addiction. The result of all this is a play about eating disorders that really need not scare anyone away: it is as funny and engaging as it is sensitive and insightful.

Horton is assisted in her tale by Hannah Boyde as Boris, Josephine’s university friend, and Seiriol Davies as Sistahl, their musical accompanist, who also provides them with sound effects. Both are excellent, with Boyde in particular seeming at first a joke as Boris, cross-dressed and vaguely 1930s, all bumbling and stiff-upper-lip – but Boris’s devotion to his friend is taken absolutely seriously and it soon becomes clear that Boyde is capable of breaking your heart with merely a look. She and Horton complement each other nicely, while Davies, whose Sistahl helps and hinders by turns, has spot-on timing from start to finish. Together, they won The Stage’s Best Ensemble award for 2012 when this show ran at the Edinburgh Fringe, and it is easy to see why. Alex Swift’s direction, too, keeps the tightly rehearsed set pieces feeling loose and spontaneous, and gets the most out of the whole cast.

Some critics have found all the whimsy a little too cloying, and while that’s fair enough, for me it was perfect. This is a love letter to life, after all, with all of its joy and all of its mess, from a woman who became so ill that she was simply removed from it. There is magic in the very seams of this production; to say much more would be to spoil its beautiful surprises.

Before going to see Mess I spent some time trying to choose who to bring with me. I dithered, knowing the subject manner: so many of the close friends I considered inviting had struggled themselves with an eating disorder, or been affected by the struggles of close family members, or close friends. To say that it is becoming a horribly common problem is not to trivialise these illnesses or to dismiss their importance: rather, this is exactly why they are so important, and why Mess demands to be seen. Because the lives of women and men across the country are riddled with this, punctured by the echo of their own calorie-counting, or their sister’s, or their friend’s, and this is a play that both cares and understands.

Mess is playing at the Battersea Arts Centre until 1 June. For more information and tickets, see the Battersea Arts Centre website.