Published: 9 February, 2012
by JOSH LOEB

• “It was weird. It was the first time I felt like I was not the one writing it, like I was just an audience to two people speaking.” So says John Thompson of his dark comedy, A Russian Play, which opens at the Lion and Unicorn Theatre in Kentish Town next week.

Mr Thompson, 42, lives in Archway and is a freelance graphic designer by trade. But when a client cancelled a job at the last minute and he found himself unexpectedly without work for a week, he shut himself in his room and started typing.

The result was “like Withnail and I meets Crime and Punishment”. A huge fan of Dostoyevsky, Gogol and Chekhov, Mr Thompson, has spiked his theatrical tale, set in Russia on the eve of the Bolshevik revolution, with “dark, absurdist humour”.

The former Tufnell Park Primary School pupil has infectious enthusiasm for literature and the process of writing plays. He said: “I was working on it all day every day. I was staring at the words on the screen so intently that when my girlfriend came home I asked her why there were words all over her face and had she been pressing her face against a newspaper.”

A Russian Play is at the Lion and Unicorn Theatre, 42-44 Gaisford Street, NW5, from February 14-March 4. To book call 0844 477 1000.

• Acclaimed theatre company OperaUpClose had their first big hit with La Boheme at the now-defunct Cock Tavern theatre several years ago.

The show transferred to the Soho Theatre, and now a little birdie tells me it is set to get another West End outing at an even bigger venue. Artistic director Adam Spreadbury-Maher said all would be revealed soon.

• David Schaal has acted in award-winning comedies including The Office and The Inbetweeners, but he is also a writer and he has taken on a directorial role in a production of his play, Brotherly Love, which is now at Pentameters.

Mr Schaal, who lives in Tufnell Park, said became obsessed with punk music in his youth in 1970s Stevenage. He said: “There was nothing else to do so all the young people became interested in going to gigs. It was a very creative time and it was all about do it yourself culture.”

Brotherly Love draws on his experiences.

It’s about a feud between two teenage punks that has festered for decades. In theme it sounds similar to his previous play at Pentameters, which was also about punk music. “Pentameters’ founder Léonie Scott-Matthews took a big risk then as we were playing live music,” he told me.

• Speaking of Ms Scott-Matthews, I hear her Labrador puppy Leopold is growing up fast. Léonie told me she hoped one day to stage a production of Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona starring the adorable canine.