Backstroke

After the almighty razzle dazzle of The Fear of 13 and Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, the third show in Timothy Sheader’s inaugural season at the Donmar is still pretty damn promising, even if it doesn’t quite have that start-of-season-signature-play chutzpah. Anna Mackmin writes and directs Backstroke, a drama that stars Tamsin Grieg as a mother struggling to balance the needs of her daughter and her work, whose life becomes even tougher when her own irrepressible mother Bo (Celia Imrie) suffers a stroke.