AUDITORIUM

✮✮✮✮ Made in Dagenham Adelphi Theatre | London music David Arnold lyrics Richard Thomas book Richard Bean directed by Rupert Goold Industrial unrest is unlikely grist to the mill, but it's made plenty of dough for the British film industry, whether it's Pride, Billy Elliott or The Full Monty. This easily digestible adaptation of the 2010 Britflick has a surreally silly streak that almost, but doesn't quite, undermine its attempts to depict the morally grey landscape of factor

✮✮✮ AllthePigs' The Piano Man New Diorama Theatre | London directed by Sam Carrack Ziggy Stardust and his “Spiders from Mars” blare out of the speakers at the end of this thought-provoking, collaborative experiment devised by the ensemble actors of AllthePigs' young company themselves. It's an apt choice of music because, as you may remember, a decade ago a smartly-dressed but drenched-through young man was found wandering the streets of coastal town Sheerness in Kent. The Pi

✮✮✮✮ Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk The Royal Danish Opera | Copenhagen Peter Konwitschny | Alexander Vedernikov The circumstances surrounding the early success of Shostakovich’s second and last opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, and its wholesale suppression by Stalin’s regime two years later, are so well known that one is tempted to view the work as an act of insurrection. But in fact, Stalin’s unbending response to the piece as”muddle instead of music” notwithstanding

✮ 1/2 Duncan Macmillan & Chris Rapley's 2071 The Royal Court Theatre | London directed by Katie Mitchell Artistic director Vicky Featherstone's Royal Court season is themed around “revolutions: big and small acts of resistance.” After two rumbunctious plays up and downstairs at the venue, this sombrely-served climate change lecture is more of a cold white wine than a molotov cocktail. It’s marketed as a play, and has a director, lighting designer and set designer as you mi

✮✮✮✮✮ David Rabe's Sticks and Bones The New Group | NYC directed by Scott Elliott Some productions deal in subtleties – the mental landscapes shifting subtly as sunlight through passing clouds. The New Group’s revival of David Rabe’s 1971 play is one of them, making his unsettling evocation of a blind Vietnam veteran’s homecoming an intensely claustrophobic broadcast of interlocking jet-streams, atmospheres and gathering storms. Toting his kitbag and a white cane, David is of

✮✮✮✮ 1/2 Joanna Murray-Smith's Switzerland Sydney Theatre Company | Sydney directed by Sarah Goodes The term masterpiece is used to describe a work of outstanding creativity, skill and workmanship. Although it is far too early to declare that Switzerland is Joanna Murray-Smith’s most celebrated work, there is no doubt that the playwright has founded something extraordinary with this fictional account of American author Patricia Highsmith’s very last days. Along with Sarah Pei

✮✮✮ Purcell's Dido & Aeneas Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle L.A. Opera | Los Angeles Barrie Kosky | Steven Sloane The opening of L.A. Opera’s pairing of Dido and Aeneas and Bluebeard’s Castle was musically the best night I’ve spent at the opera in two decades. The two works may have little in common on the surface, but they are arguably the pivotal one-act operas in their respective centuries. Before entering the Dorothy Chandler my companion and I had speculated on whether Dido

✮ Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing Roundabout Theatre Company | NYC directed by Sam Gold Tom Stoppard's plays have an artifice that can charm and infuriate in equal measure. This revival of his 1982 work looks inward to a playwright's own box of tricks, and the damage they do when unleashed on their owner. Roundabout Theatre Company, which specializes in bringing British plays to Broadway, has done its best to brighten its dated, indoor firework fizzle with a star cast of Maggie