Tu i Teraz, (Here and Now), Hampstead Theatre, review If ever I lay hands on a bit of dosh or find more time in my working week, I'd love to research and write a play about the experience of Polish immigrants to this country during and just after the Second World War. These days, as Damian Thompson pointed out in his column on Saturday, you can hardly walk into a coffee bar without discovering that suddenly the staff are all Polish but in the 1940s there was a big influx of Poles too - my paternal grandparents, who ran a hotel in Reading for many years, being among their number - and it would be a shame if that war-ravaged generation's adjustment to life in England never found significant expression on the stage. Maybe Nicola Werenowska's play Tu i Teraz (Here and Now) - the existence of which I thank Thompson for alerting me to in his article - could do with some reference to previous Polish incomers in its attempt to sketch the difficulties faced today by Poles, whose first taste of the UK tends to involve squalid accommodation and hunting for menial work. The simple plot, detailing how a single mother, Marysia, has turned her back on her troubled past and homeland to raise her son Kuba as an English-speaking success-story encapsulates the ambition and self-sacrifice of this industrious breed. If there's an over-arching theme to the episodic evening - unnecessarily prolonged with a 20-minute interval by director Sam Potter - it's to do with roots and belonging and how much of your identity you need to give up in order to integrate into another culture. Married to a second-generation Pole, Werenowska - who hails from Colchester, where the piece is partly set - has done lots of research but divulges too little personal background and historical context for the dilemmas confronting the family here to flare into rich psychological life. In culinary terms, it's all dumplings and no meaty stew. Still, it's nice to hear Polish being spoken in bursts, with the onus on the audience to fathom the sense, and the broken English phrasing rings true too. Ania Sowinski and Mark Strepan display more charisma than their parts as the tough, unhappy mother and sullen adolescent son warrant and Anna Elijasz shines as Marysia's estranged sister Anna. Worth a look for Polack-philes but the script needs more in the way of, erm, heavy-duty polish to gleam brightly. To Jan 19.