AUDITORIUM

✮✮✮✮ Anne Washburn's Mr Burns Almeida Theatre | London directed by Robert Icke Huddled round a campfire, post-apocalyptic refugees try to remember the words to a sacred text – it’s recited, puzzled over, and elaborated on. This safe spot in a poisoned America? Cape Feare: The Simpsons episode where Sideshow Bob’s quest to kill Bart reaches dramatic, gothic heights. It’s no coincidence that these reminiscers refer to its Second Act, or savour lines like sips of salvaged Diet C

✮✮ 1/2 Polly Stenham's Hotel National Theatre | London directed by Maria Aberg If the Telegraph travel supplement got into a fight with a Guardian exposé, the result might look a little like Hotel – fun enough to watch the ink fly, but ultimately an unwieldy encounter between mismatched type. The element of surprise is firmly on playwright Polly Stenham’s side as we settle in for what appears to be another barb-tongued bourgeois brouhaha in the vein of That Face. The nuclear

✮✮✮✮ Simon Gray's In the Vale of Health: Japes | Michael | Japes Too | Missing Dates Hampstead Theatre | London directed by Tamara Harvey In the wake of the late great Simon Gray, the Hampstead Theatre here pays tribute to the characters who constantly niggled away at his thoughts, right into his seventies. And where better to stage one revival and three unseen plays, all set in Hampstead, consecutively one after another. Two orphaned brothers: Michael the healthy elder and J

✮✮ David W. Lintels' Clarence Darrow The Old Vic | London directed by Thea Sharrock "I've always thought lawyers like to say more than is absolutely necessary." This show, Kevin Spacey's last at the Old Vic and first as solo performer, casts him as a garrolous attorney and folk hero of declining years, remembering a career of arguing of horse traders and social justice for thirty-odd years either side of 1900. Thoroughly argued, it's still a slender proposition to fill the ma

✮✮✮ Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra The Globe | London directed by Jonathan Munby Watching a favourite Shakespearean play again and again can be exponentially rewarding; seeing an unfamiliar work by the bard may be equivalently baffling. The Globe's Antony and Cleopatra begins with a vigorous dance number, full of raucous and bawdy revels, setting the scene for a saga of conflict and war. Following the death of Julius Caesar and the defeat of Brutus, the Roman Empire is ru

✮✮✮✮ George Orwell's 1984 Playhouse Theatre | London directed by Duncan Macmillan & Robert Icke Theatre adaptations of classic novels would probably go in several critics’ personal Room 101s – especially those with narrators, or, heaven forfend, voiceovers. But this latest transfer from Islington powerhouse the Almeida Theatre manages to be intensely literary without any of the staid, storytelling bookishness that can plague the genre. Together, Duncan Macmillan and Robert Ic

✮✮✮ Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot Arcola Theatre | London directed by Simon Dormandy It’s been a long wait for an update to Beckett’s 1953 play, but this slick and lively new version at the Arcola theatre is stepping with bravado into a storied production history. The play conjures ideas of almost unbearably nostalgic tramps in battered bowler hats and beaten up suits; quaint, antic figures on a dusty country road. Director Simon Dormandy hasn’t had the heart – or guts

✮✮✮✮ Alan Ayckbourn's A Small Family Business National Theatre | London directed by Adam Penfold Following on from his 1977 hit Bedroom Farce, Alan Ayckbourn’s A Small Family Business first premiered at The National Theatre in 1986 to rave reviews. At the time it was celebrated as an anti-Thatcher piece, hailed by Mark Ravenhill as “one of the most intensely political plays of the period.” How does the play hold up 27 years later? Extremely well, it seems. The idea of trying

✮✮✮✮ Mike Bartlett's King Charles III Almeida Theatre | London directed by Rupert Goold Mike Bartlett’s King Charles III is a modern day Shakespearian masterpiece. A piece of lèse-majesté which if performed in Shakespeare’s time, would surely have led to imprisonment and execution. Thankfully, this wonderful production at the Almeida should escape calls of treason. The play opens with the funeral of our much loved and popular Queen. Elizabeth II has died after seventy gloriou

✮✮✮✮ 1/2 Simon Stephens' Birdland The Royal Court Theatre | London directed by Carrie Cracknell As though in a scene from an old, old fairytale: a prince whose every demand is anticipated and met demands a perfect peach. Not too green, not too ripe, locally grown. The scene could be a parable for what money can't buy you – and in a more straightforward story it might be. But Simon Stephens' bleakly brilliant new play tells you both what money can buy, and what it can’t, chron