AUDITORIUM

✮ Anton Chekhov's The Seagull Regent's Park Open Air Theatre | London directed by Matthew Dunster I wonder what Stanislavski would make of this. Here his famously-accented ‘bits’ – or beats, slices of action in this oft-revived Chekhov – are accompanied by Christopher Shutt’s jarring bass drone. These moments of ominous importance, klaxons that would be more at home in a trailer for a Michael Bay film, occur countless times throughout the evening and are about as subtle as a

✮✮1/2 Rebecca Gilman's Luna Gale Hampstead Theatre | London directed by Michael Attenborough Rebecca Gilman’s Luna Gale may be set in present day Iowa, but the questions it raises – and their rankling replies – are of interest to any country with a bureaucratic responsibility for its children. The risk in accepting this culpability is the knowledge that with one false move, one slip of a vulnerable child through the net, the entire system falls apart, taking both public trust

✮✮✮✮1/2 Stephen Adly Guirgis' The Motherf**ker with the Hat National Theatre | London directed by Indhu Rubasingham The ‘C’ word here being nothing more flagrant than ‘commitment’. And yet, as words go these days, almost as controversial. Commitment to our romantic relationships, yes, and therein lies the plot – but also commitment to ourselves, to that intangible sense, barely more than a hunch, of the self that dwells somewhere between past mistakes and tentative fidelity t

✮✮✮✮✮ Tristan Bernays's Teddy Southwark Playhouse | London music Dougal Irvine directed by Eleanor Rhode Snapdragon and Theatre Bench’s production of Teddy accomplishes that rarest of things: it leaves you feeling as giddy and untethered as a teenager again. This time machine of a show, powered by fictional four-piece Johnny Valentine and The Broken Hearts, crackles with vintage chemistry as Teddy and Josie – two spunky, sparky, South London youths – embark on a fateful night

✮✮1/2 Patrick Marber's The Red Lion National Theatre | London directed by Ian Rickson "Is it illegal? Is it a bung?" talented young semi-pro footballer Jordan asks his manager as dodgy arrangements, "sweeteners," are put in place to facilitate his transfer to another club. "It's football," the gaffer replies. "It's the wild west down 'ere. Unregulated." Welcome to the world not of corrupt FIFA officials and World Cup bids but grassroots, non-league football. The common link?

✮✮ Cole Porter's High Society The Old Vic | London directed by Maria Friedman It’s tough at the top: the press are snooping through your knicker drawer, your father’s cavorting with a dancer half his age, your ex-husband’s trying to give you a yacht you don’t want and you simply can’t stomach all that champagne these days. Such are the problems of Tracy Lord as she navigates her way through her own wedding party attended by the great, the good, and the gorgeous of America’s H

✮✮✮✮ Everyman National Theatre | London a new adaptation by Carol Ann Duffy directed by Rufus Norris From start to finish (or cradle to grave, to crowbar in a theme) this is an incendiary opening salvo from the National Theatre’s new artistic director Rufus Norris. Fast-paced, engaging, funny and precise, it delivers in every anachronistically delicious way you expect a Medieval morality play to – yet by addressing our modern addiction to self-gratification it achieves much m

✮✮✮✮ Marco Ramirez's The Royale Bush Theatre | London directed by Madani Younis Six black boxers stand blindfolded, enrounded by a baying white crowd. A smashed bottle signifies the start of the fight. They are left to slug it out, swinging wildly, eyes bound, until one man alone is left standing. The winner is awarded the dubious honour of scrambling for pennies scattered by the mob. But there’s more than coins left in the dust. This is just one of many rich stories that run

✮✮ John Ford's The Broken Heart Sam Wanamaker Playhouse directed by Caroline Steinbeis This play should really be called The Broken Hearts, plural. A beautiful princess's death at the very end is attributed to her "broken heart," but she is merely the last of several characters who meet a sticky finale because they're desperately unhappy with how their romantic entanglements have panned out. Murder, suicide, and self-starvation as well as simply giving up the will to live are

✮✮✮ Beautiful: The Carole King Musical Aldwych Theatre | London book Douglas McGrath music & lyrics Gerry Goffin | Carole King | Barry Mann | Cynthia Weil directed by Marc Bruni “I can't watch my life like this,” Carole King told her daughter and manager Sherry Kondor after reluctantly attending an early reading of Beautiful, long before it reached Broadway. But 73 year-old King herself turned up at the opening night of this West End transfer, afterwards taking to the stage t