AUDITORIUM

✮✮✮✮✮ Barney Norris's Visitors Arcola Theatre | London directed by Alice Hamilton One old-fashioned living room, ornamented with seated figures who have lost, or are losing themselves; billed as a love story, Barney Norris's play is more of a loss story. His first staged full-length script reveals itself as such only by its freshness and lightness of touch – his handling of this dimly unfolding story of forgetting is masterful. Edie and Arthur are an elderly couple living tog

✮✮✮✮ 1/2 David Lindsay-Abaire's Good People Hampstead Theatre | London directed by Jonathan Kent Following a rapturous run on Broadway, picking up multiple awards including Best Actress for Frances McDormand and a Best Play nomination at the Tonys, Good People has its UK première at the Hampstead Theatre. It's a safe bet: during the 2012-13 season it was the most produced play in America. Jonathan Kent directs a strong cast led by Imelda Staunton, here on outstanding form. St

✮✮✮✮ Robert Schenkkan's All The Way Neil Simon Theatre | NYC directed by Bill Rauch So many of the biggest Broadway shows sell America somewhere else – fantasies of talking African lions, witches in Oz, French revolutionaries or Northern English drag queens. Robert Schenkkan’s bold new political drama, together with the newly revived classic Raisin in the Sun, hints at a more introspective mood – both look at the America of 50 years ago, at a time of national self-examination

✮✮✮✮ Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage Krudttønden | That Theatre Company | Copenhagen directed by Harry Burton A few years ago that master satirist Yasmina Reza proposed being a disciple – if not the deity – of a new genre: ‘funny tragedy’. If Marx was right about history repeating itself, first as tragedy then as farce, then this pile-up of genre seems a logical progression. And there’s nothing more tragically funny than the call to arms of those who cry “think of the children,