New Year's Eve is the time when everybody is partying with friends, dressed up to the nines, drinking champagne and dancing the night away.

Or is it? What happens to the lonely people who end up spending New Year’s Eve by themselves? That’s what this charming trio of playlets from KIBO Productions is all about.

The first, Tea Set by Gina Moxley, is about a nameless young woman (Amy Molloy) who has agreed to granny-sit an old lady while her children see in the New Year in St. Lucia. She needs the money and she doesn’t really want to be alone. It should be simple but it isn’t.

The old lady, it turns out, has decide to take her own life while the children are away, putting her young carer in a terrible position.

Amy is marvellous in this role, alone on stage for almost an hour, as she explains how she got into this awful situation. As she talks she fiddles with glue and broken crockery which turns out to be a dolls’ tea set that was a gift from the old lady, that got broken when she dropped it.

It’s a neatly rounded play that ends as it began, she’s in a police station, and now she’s explained what happened to the old lady, she also has to explain why there’s a man, who may or may not be alive, tied up in her own flat. Totally unexpected it adds a great last minute twist.

The second pay is Numb by Gemma Langford. Roz (Emma Fisher) is a young woman who’d be a party girl if anyone would invite her. Alone in the city on New Year's Eve, she picks up Charlie (James Naylor), another lonely soul who hasn’t been invited anywhere, and takes him home.

Roz wants sex, Charlie wants chips, he only came back with her because she promised him chips. Roz is brittle and aggressive, mistaking sex with a stranger for companionship. Charlie has his problems but he’s a decent bloke at heart and he doesn’t want to go to bed with her so they talk and we find out more about them and why things are as they are. Thought provoking stuff.

Finally there’s Herman by Pericles Snowden. Herman’s girl friend dumped him six months ago and since then he’s been a regular at their favourite table in their favourite restaurant and New Year’s Eve is no different except that this time there’s another lonely person there.

Shannon (Eleanor Cope), whose blind date fled the restaurant before she arrived, thinks Herman is her blind date. They’re not getting on too badly when ex-girlfriend Shelley ( Rayyah McCaul) turns up to make things difficult. This one is funnier than the other two, especially as it’s narrated by the gloriously camp waiter (Simon Rhodes).

This is good theatre at this quaint little venue and the very hard working cast deserve a bigger audience.

Resolutions continues till January 25, with tickets priced £14, or £10 concessions. To book tickets, call the box office on 020 8932 4747 or book online. Find out more on the website.

Barons Court Theatre is at the Curtain's Up pub in Comeragh Road, W14.

December 3, 2014