STEVEN BERKOFF'S East is not easy to stage, but, in January, director Jessica Lazar and her cast of five made the absolute most of what they had to work with at the King's Head.

There were highly impressive performances by two actors fresh out of drama school from Boadicea Ricketts as the earthily confident young Sylv and Jack Condon as the bored, street-fighting shoe-shop assistant Les but the standout was 25-year-old James Craze as Mike, who coped with the physical and emotional gymnastics of his Jack the Lad part as if it had been written directly for him, rather than first performed almost two decades before his birth.