It’s been more than 20 years since the premiere of The Shape of Things, Neil LaBute’s prickly drama about couples and friends and the ways we change each other. And boy, does it show. Director Nicky Allpress and a talented young cast try their best with a script that, though updated for this version at the Park Theatre, still feels behind the times.

Who better to write a piece about the game-playing of a peace-talks negotiation than a former peace-talk negotiator, Daniel Taub? And who better to sprinkle some comedy oofle dust on the proceedings than the TV producer and writer Dan Patterson, begetter of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Mock the Week and many collaborations with Clive Anderson?

Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park arrived at London’s Royal Court like a blazing comet in 2010, a bold kind of satire about race relations that was both sassy and savvy.

Carey Crim’s 2017 play arrives from the US at north London's Park Theatre trailing a feminist playwriting award for its dissection of what happens when a smart college senior raised by two women starts to question her parentage.

I’ve lived in Brixton, south London, for about 40 years now, so any play that looks at the gentrification of the area is, for me, definitely a must. Like many other places in the metropolis, the nature of the urban landscape has changed both due to gradual factors — such as migration — and spectacular events — like the Brixton riots of 1981 and 1985.

Actor Miriam Margolyes is a phenomenon. Not only has this Dickensian starred in high-profile shows both here and in Australia, a country whose citizenship she took up in 2013, but she is also Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter films. And a familiar face from television. And a voice on radio. The programme lists her 12 major awards.

Mother of Him was written a decade ago, but its most prescient moment happens in the first five minutes of Max Lindsay's production at the Park Theatre. Brenda Kapowitz (Tracy-Ann Oberman) presents a sheaf of papers to Robert (Simon Hepworth, excellent), a family friend who’s also her 17-year-old son’s lawyer. “Report cards, awards,” she explains.

According to their mother, Luda (played by Madeleine Worrall, pictured below), each of the three sisters (pictured top) in Napoli, Brooklyn, bears one of their father’s admirable traits. Tina (Mona Goodwin), the oldest, who left school early to earn money for the family in a factory job, has his strength. Vita (Georgia May Foote), who is smart but has been banished to a convent school for crossing her father, has his tongue.

What could have been merely a cheap and cheesy piss-take registers as considerably more robust in The Last Temptation of Boris Johnson, journo-turned-playwright Jonathan Maitland's latest venture for his de facto home at north London's Park Theatre.

Theatrical alchemy is eternally slippery.