AUDITORIUM

✮ 1/2 Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya St.James Theatre | London directed by Russell Bolam It’s a bafflement. Not the updating of a hundred-year-old play to the contemporary scene, nor its production in the irregular swank of the St. James Theatre. No, the befuddling thing is the pair of Crocs onstage. It’s hard enough to fathom the Chekhovian superfluous man at the best of times – add the mystery of why he would choose to wear no-one’s favourite amphibious footwear and things get

✮✮ 1/2 Sophocles' Electra in a version by Frank McGuinness The Old Vic | London directed by Ian Rickson It’s the old luvvie’s refrain: treat new plays like classics and classics like new plays. In Electra’s case Sophocles may well have found himself sitting down to some hair-tearing sessions with his dramaturg. Classic it may be, but there are a fair few sticky moments of plotting. It’s difficult to relish a speech gushing over a chariot race’s horses, or to invest in the new

✮✮✮✮ Theresa Rebeck's Seminar Hampstead Theatre | London directed by Terry Johnson Shortly before last week's announcement of 2014's Nobel literature prize winner, Swedish Academy member Horace Engdahl lamented to journalists how the "professionalisation" of creative writing is wrecking Western literature. Fierce debate raged as a result, unsurprisingly, especially in Europe and America where taught writing courses are such a huge industry these days. This brouhaha couldn

✮✮✮✮ Enda Walsh's Ballyturk National Theatre | London directed by Enda Walsh Ballyturk is an Irish town of Father Ted surrealness, so insular that simply wearing a yellow jumper marks a man out as irrecovably other – “it’s not normal in any sense.” In Enda Walsh’s similarly abnormal but utterly fascinating new play, the town’s stories are an outlet for two young men trapped in a room that’s treacherous with hidden cubby holes – a hamster cage for two hyperactive humans. In st

✮✮✮ Geoffrey Nauffts' Next Fall Southwark Playhouse | London directed by Luke Sheppard Geoffrey Nauffts’ Next Fall was written only five years ago, in 2009. Having finished on Broadway not long after, it feels a long time coming to UK audiences. The play, exploring the intimacies of a gay couple, one of whom is also deeply religious, is a tad overdue. However, with an audience made up of mainly men many of whom willing to discuss their “gayness” during a post-show Q&A, it spe

✮✮✮ 1/2 Tim Price's Teh Internet is Serious Business The Royal Court Theatre | London directed by Hamish Pirie A socially awkward penguin reclines in an Olympic-sized ball-pit with Willy Wonka, a Storm Trooper and the affectionately titled Pedo-Bear. Above the stage hang the logos of Twitter, Facebook, and the hundred-million-view-grossing, rainbow-pooping Nyan Cat. Just your average night at the Royal Court. God knows what Olivier would make of this. The opening of Tim Price

✮✮✮✮ Chris Thompson's Albion Bush Theatre | London directed by Ria Parry “I've got a gay, I've got a black. Everyone still thinks we're the fucking BNP. What more do these people want?” So moans Paul Ryman (Steve John Shepherd), the sweary landlord of proper East End boozer The Albion and leader (for now) of the BNP-like English Protection Army (EPA). These aren't your average hate-filled scumbags: Paul's deputy and best mate, Kyle (Delroy Atkinson) is black, while his tracks

✮✮✮ Ben Ockrent's Breeders St. James Theatre | London directed by Tamara Harvey Breeders used to be a not-so-affectionate nickname for straight people – now, it’s a description that neatly titles a story of two modern gay people who, like this play, have set up comfortable home in the cultural mainstream. Ben Ockrent’s peppy new comedy centres on an affluent lesbian couple desperate to have a child that belongs to both of them, even if it means coralling a rather more feckles

✮✮✮✮ End of Moving Walkway's Oh, the Humanity and Other Good Intentions Tabard Theatre | London directed by Paul Lichtenstern This debut production by polished new company End of Moving Walkway in a leafy corner of West London felt like something you might experience at a far bigger venue, on a good day. In fact, the cramped wooden flip-seat stalls – presumably reclaimed from some big old theatre before it was knocked down or converted into flats – made the auditorium feel li

✮✮✮ 1/2 Christopher Sergel's To Kill A Mockingbird Regent's Park OpenAir Theatre | London directed by Timothy Sheader For many years, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, set during the Great Depression has been known as a classic. However in recent months it has come under scrutiny and deemed irrelevant to modern day audiences; being dropped from the school syllabus along with other classics such as Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. This tale of one man’s plight to do the right th