AUDITORIUM

✮✮✮ Chekov's Three Sisters Southwark Playhouse | London directed by Russell Bolan Three Sisters opened at the Southwark Playhouse in a new version by award-winning writer Anya Reiss. Reiss, well known for her work at the Royal Court, her modern adaptations of Spring Awakening and another Chekov with last year's The Seagull, now tackles Three Sisters: a challenge in itself which Reiss takes it on head-first with mixed results. The setting ('near a British Embassy, overseas, no

✮✮✮✮✮ 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

✮✮✮ Tracy Letts' Superior Donuts Southwark Playhouse | London directed by Ned Bennett American dramatist Tracy Letts' searing, Pulitzer-winning play August: Osage County played the National Theatre in 2008 after making a hit on Broadway with its acerbic dissection of a hapless Oklahoma matriarchy. By comparison, his second play to be performed in London is fluffier fare, turning an intimate space into a crumblingly nostalgic doughnut shop; a sweet emblem of Old America. Thro

✮✮✮ Nick Payne's Blurred Lines National Theatre | London directed by Carrie Cracknall I had a potential father-in-law who used to bark at me for using the term ‘actor’ for female performers. “You wouldn’t call a waitress ‘waiter’, would you? Men and women are different, don’t try and tell me they’re not.” I didn’t. They are different. The question is the difference in treatment. It only takes the opening of a newspaper to see the noxious effects of sexism across the globe. He

✮✮✮✮ Ibsen's Ghosts Trafalgar Studios | London directed by Richard Eyre Ibsen’s play was written to shock, and succeeded; at the time, the Daily Telegraph christened it “a loathsome sore unbandaged, a dirty act done publically... literary carrion.” The play’s carnal subversions and frenzies now sound muffled in a way that Nora’s final door slam of A Doll’s House isn’t, quite, but Richard Eyre’s harrowing staging means that these ghosts have lost none of their power to haunt.

✮✮✮✮ David Hare's The Judas Kiss Duke of York's Theatre | London directed by Neil Armfield Following its brief run at Hampstead Theatre last autumn, David Hare’s 1998 play The Judas Kiss has now successfully transferred to London’s West End with Rupert Everett repeating his magnificent interpretation of the literary genius Oscar Wilde and the young Freddie Fox as the object of his obsession, Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie). The Judas Kiss is thankfully not loaded with pseudo Wild