Becky Shaw almeida Theatre ****  Here, the american playwright Gina Gionfriddo deals with the ripples caused by a lethally depressing blind date. I went along expecting a Neil Labutelike comedy of noxious manners, but this has hidden depths as well as surface fizz, and is largely free from the misanthropy that infects Labute's work. The titular character is a penniless, perennially disappointed singleton keen to get her life on track. The newlyweds Suzanna and andrew set her up with Max, who was adopted by Suzanna's parents. In the aftermath of the date, the quasi-incestuous passion that flickers between Max and Suzanna threatens to reignite, while andrew finds himself drawn to the weepy Becky. Whether Becky is vulnerable or conniving is almost the least interesting question raised by this nimble and very funny play. The dramatist takes the changing moral temperatures of all her characters without succumbing to finger-wagging. and David Wilson Barnes proves himself a star in the making in Peter DuBois's deft production. His tricky, deadpan Max manages to become touching without ever ditching his arsenal of cynical, amusingly rude remarks. MS  Less Than Kind Jermyn Street Theatre ****  The centenary year of Terence Rattigan's birth is launched, unusually, with a premiere, a comedy inspired by Hamlet that combines a lively sense of humour with real emotional pain. Michael, a young radical, returns to London in 1944 and discovers to his disgust that his widowed mother, Olivia, has moved up in the world and is living with an industrialist and cabinet minister, Sir John Fletcher. Rattigan pits youth against experience, idealism versus selfishness, and priggishness against a wry understanding of life's absurdities. at 33, he must have been distancing himself from his own youthful ideals, since Michael (David Osmond), in whom politics and an Oedipus complex are uncomfortably mixed, is given a rough ride. Not everything in the plot makes sense, particularly the mother's behaviour, but Michael Simkins as Rattigan's Claudius sinuously conveys both the power of the politician and the guile of a middle-aged man in love, and adrian Brown's deft production is ample justification for bringing this lost play to life. JE  Little Platoons Bush Theatre ****  Steve Waters likes to handle political hot potatoes. Having tackled climate change in The Contingency Plan, here the playwright turns to free schools. Rachel (a luminous Claire Price) is a music teacher disheartened by her job in a west London comp, where h