A companion piece to Simon Gray’s dark comedy Japes, Michael looks at the same story from a different viewpoint.

The death of Michael and Jason’s parents when they were both teenagers helped to make the pair as close as siblings can be. Their inherited home remains unchanged since then, part shrine, part playground. But life changes when Michael falls for Anita. And so does Jason, also known as Japes.

When playwright Simon Gray finished writing original play Japes, he felt the characters had unfinished business or might have made different choices, so he began work on Japes Too. Worrying that he had only told one side of the story he wrote Michael. With the characters still playing on his mind, he wrote Missing Dates.

All four plays play in rep for the first time at the Hampstead Theatre Downstairs.