For a few years now, one of the central planks of Paines Plough’s touring strategy has been Roundabout, its “pop-up, plug-and-play theatre” to enable it to take rep seasons of new writing to places that don’t have a dedicated theatre space. London, however, already has one or two venues of its own, so the plays – in this case, the 2017 batch – are presented in a theatre which comes close to the Roundabout scale and feel. No seat on any of the four sides of the 180-capacity Orange Tree is further than three rows from the stage; put a 4m-diameter circular LED ribbon on the stage and James Grieve’s productions are literally in the round.

The three shows are an hour long each, give or take ten minutes; Elinor Cook’s Out Of Love and Brad Birch’s Black Mountain play in evening repertoire, with Sarah McDonald-Hughes’ How To Be A Kid joining them on Thursdays and Saturdays for the chance to see the whole package (in separate houses) in one day. All three are performed by Hasan Dixon, Sally Messham and Katie Elin-Salt.

Usually, shows seen en groupe strengthen each other and offer a collective coherence. In this case, I’m afraid the opposite is the case. I spent How To Be A Kid wondering why Elin-Salt’s Molly, coping with the death of her nan and her mother’s depressive breakdown, seemed so much younger than her 12 years, and had concluded generously that this was a clever strategy to enable the younger children in the audience (the play is rated for ages 7+) to identify with her. A few hours later in Out Of Love, a dispiritingly similar performance as a 13-year-old persuaded me that in fact she just isn’t very good at child-acting. Likewise, I was charitably disposed towards the foggy ambiguities of Black Mountain – in which a couple go on a rural retreat to rebuild their relationship, but seem haunted in a very literal sense by the male partner’s affair which launched them on to the rocks in the first place – until I saw the equally indeterminate Out Of Love. Cook’s play seems unable to decide whether it is about misandry, suppressed lesbianism or any other development of the basic, intensely homosocial friendship it portrays over 30 years... and portrays in a way grimmer and more wearing, unintentionally, than the modern-Gothic elements of Black Mountain, which are at least handled knowingly.

Grieve stages all three productions without set or props (other than a handheld flashlight in Black Mountain), and apart from the requirements of role-doubling in Out Of Love, the three actors default to their own accents: Dixon south-eastern, Messham northern, Elin-Salt south Welsh. All in all, there is no superstructure to detract from the writing, which is Paines Plough’s explicit focus as a company. Unfortunately, on this occasion, that writing simply isn’t much cop.

Written for the Financial Times.