Everyone is familiar with their hits “Cabaret” and “Chicago”, said Clive Davis in The Times. Yet John Kander and Fred Ebb’s later musical “Kiss of the Spider Woman” – “a fiercely intelligent portrait” of two men who form an unlikely bond in a prison cell in Argentina during its Dirty War – “has slipped from view”.

Now, though, a new film version is about to land, and we also have this “glorious, scaled-down” stage production in Leicester (then Bristol). Based on Manuel Puig’s novel, and with a book by Terrence McNally, the piece is “as bold and thoughtful as any Sondheim”, and the “dynamics of a drama” played out in a cramped space are well served by Paul Foster’s “chamber approach” here. With deft choreography, and a full sound drawn from a small band, the evening “is a triumph all round”.

It’s an “exceptional” production, agreed Holly O’Mahony in The Stage – as “smooth as spider’s silk”. Fabian Soto Pacheco gives a wonderfully layered turn as Molina, the gay window-dresser jailed for gross indecency, who survives his incarceration by retreating into “elaborate fantasies” based on old movies, said Susan Novak on British Theatre. His flamboyance never tips into caricature, and along with wit and warmth there is real pain. “Opposite him, George Blagden brings steely conviction” to the part of Valentin, the committed political activist whose “ideological armour gradually develops cracks”. The pair provide the drama with its “beating heart”, while Anna-Jane Casey thrills as the film star Aurora (and her sinister Spider Woman alter ego), who appears in fantasy sequences to embody fear, desire and death.

Kander and Ebb have form in mixing gritty with glamorous, said Holly Williams in The Telegraph. They pulled it off perfectly in “Cabaret” and “Chicago”. But this brutal tale, which switches from scenes of torture to high-camp fantasia, sets a greater challenge. Foster’s production (the show’s first major revival in the UK since 1992) has much to recommend it, but it “can’t quite untangle the Spider Woman’s knotty web”.

Curve Theatre, Leicester. Until 23 April, then Bristol Old Vic and on

For a play that famously ends with the suicides of its two teenage protagonists, Robert Icke’s production of “Romeo & Juliet” feels “outlandishly joyful” and “profoundly alive”, said Alice Saville in The Independent.

Fuelled by fizzing performances from its “duo of stars”, Sadie Sink (from “Stranger Things”) and Noah Jupe (“Hamnet”), this is a “richly emotional, brilliantly intelligent take on a classic – one that’ll plunge a knife into your heart so skilfully that you hardly notice the pain”. Sink, already a Broadway veteran at 23, is “magnificent” – with a “steely passion”, quick wit and unguarded physical abandon, said Nick Curtis in London’s The Standard. And she’s well matched by Jupe, who makes a consummately assured stage debut as a boyish and impetuous Romeo.

The two leads are terrific, agreed Houman Barekat in The New York Times. So sincere and touching are their performances that we almost forgive the quirks that threaten to overbalance the play.

In “Romeo & Juliet”, “fate is a matter of bad timing”: the young lovers are confounded by bad luck as much as warring clans. “Urgent communications don’t get through; realisations come too late.” Icke draws attention to this with a giant digital clock, counting down the hours, that appears above the actors; at times it rewinds, and scenes replay with slight variations. It’s all rather “gimmicky”, generating only a “cheap, slightly hammy suspense”.

There are a lot of distractions in this modern-dress staging, agreed Clive Davis in The Times. It too often lapses into broad comedy; at times it seems as if we’ve stumbled into “an entirely new play called ‘Two Geezers of Verona’”. Kasper Hilton-Hille’s Mercutio “can’t stop baring his bottom”, and there’s “precious little sense of a city at war with itself”.

It would have made for a more elegant production had Icke not made so many directorial “interventions”, said Andrzej Lukowski in Time Out – but “auteurs are gonna auteur”. And the cast is truly excellent: from the leads to Clare Perkins’ Nurse, and Clark Gregg as Juliet’s father Capulet, through to the minor characters. Reined in a little bit, this could have been an all-time great “Romeo & Juliet”. Instead, “we’ll have to settle for one that’s merely very good”.

Harold Pinter Theatre, London SW1. Until 20 June.

Kimberly Belflower’s “John Proctor Is the Villain” was a hit on Broadway and received seven Tony nominations – and “it’s easy to see why”, said Sarah Crompton on WhatsOnStage.

This “exuberant, perceptive and absolutely essential” play is about a group of teenage girls studying “The Crucible” at the apex of the #MeToo movement in 2018. They’ve asked to set up a feminist society at their high school in conservative, small-town Georgia, and the authorities have reluctantly agreed – thanks to their charismatic male English teacher offering to be its sponsor.

As they dig into “The Crucible” with him, and one of their number (the “town slut”) returns from a mysterious, months-long absence, the play – like Arthur Miller’s witch-trial parable, featuring the adulterous John Proctor – becomes a study in “who is to be listened to; who has the right to have their word believed”. It amounts to a witty and convincing picture of “teenage girlhood, its brightness, hopes and fears”.

Belflower’s “punchy” if schematic riposte to Miller’s classic is a “terrific piece of provocative entertainment”, said Nick Curtis in London’s The Standard. The girls are high-school archetypes (“the nerd; the hot girl; the preacher’s daughter; the sophisticated blow-in from the big city”), while the two boys in the class are “lamebrain jocks”.

Yet in this recast London transfer, all these characters are brought to vivid life by superb young actors under the careful direction of Danya Taymor. The dialogue in Belflower’s study of sexual politics and victimhood “slips easily back and forth between teen anguish, dry humour and pop culture geekery”, said Clive Davis in The Times. It captures “the way classroom obsessions can so easily spiral out of control”, and reminds us that schools can be “every bit as claustrophobic as Miller’s 17th century Salem”.

It’s a shame, then, that in the closing scene, Belflower can’t resist forcing through her message as the truth about the teacher is revealed. Yes, “all nuance is lost in the final beats of the play, set to Lorde’s ‘Green Light’”, said Emily Lawford in The New Statesman. But this “thrilling” evening “still leaves you invigorated”.

Royal Court Theatre, London SW1. Until 25 April

In Robert Hastie’s “glorious revival” of Maxim Gorky’s tragi-comedy “Summerfolk”, the new regime at the National has its first “bona fide hit”, said Clive Davis in The Times.

Written in 1904, the play is a sprawling, plot-light affair with no fewer than 23 characters. In its approach and setting, it has echoes of Chekhov. But Gorky made his focus not the landed gentry on their estates, but the newly prosperous middle classes – “pre-revolutionary strivers” who are flirting and moping through a long summer in dachas that were built, perhaps, where the old cherry orchards had stood. And whereas the “good doctor” generated only “quizzical smiles”, Gorky delivers “earthy laughter” along with the pathos.

This production is “rich in period detail”, but the modern turns of phrase in Nina and Moses Raine’s adaptation “conjure up visions of 21st-century families bickering over what to watch on Netflix in a Tuscan Airbnb”.

The effect is “like Chekhov made explicit”, said Sarah Crompton on What’s on Stage. “All his references to sex, repression, the changing times, are here emphasised and elaborated as the characters fall in love, get bored, get angry, get drunk.” The play is “staggeringly wordy” (though this version is 40 minutes shorter than the last major staging in London in 1999), so the humour is welcome.

It takes a fine cast to make this work, and you won’t find a better one, said Dominic Maxwell in The Sunday Times. There is an “incredible” display of acting talent here. The sheer number of people wandering onto the stage does make the first half tricky: you wish they had name badges, the better to keep tabs on who is who; but the second half “finds the perfect fast-revolving pace of Chekhovian wit and wisdom, love and loss”.

Gorky’s critics complained that his characters lacked depth, said Dominic Cavendish in The Telegraph. These actors make us care, “in some cases sensationally so”. It is a “drawback” that the script is loaded with “distracting” modern vernacular and swearing. But go if you can. “Summerfolk” is so costly to stage, “it’ll be a generation before it’s back”.

Olivier, National Theatre, London SE1. Until 29 April

Ryan Craig’s play “The Holy Rosenbergs”, first staged in 2011, examines the response of a Jewish family in north London to the 2008/09 war in Gaza.

Fifteen years on, said Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times, it feels “strongly resonant, yet curiously like a period piece”, given the horrifying human cost of the more recent conflict. The play is an Arthur Miller-like “collision of the political and personal”.

There are acknowledged echoes of “All My Sons” in the depiction of a family reeling from the loss of a son, a pilot killed fighting with the IDF, and in the suburban mother (Tracy-Ann Oberman) “who daren’t sit still for fear of falling apart”; and there are shades of Willy Loman in the character of the father (Nicholas Woodeson), who is desperate to save his ailing kosher catering company.

Matters come to a head when their daughter Ruth (Dorothea Myer-Bennett) arrives. A UN lawyer, she is investigating war crimes during the conflict. This has enraged members of their local community, which could be the last straw for her father’s firm.

This gripping play tackles “knotty ethical family dilemmas” as well as fraught geopolitical issues, said Clive Davis in The Times. Yet it also has a “wry humour”: “time and again, you find yourself laughing through the pain while admiring the finely wrought performances”.

It’s an “absorbing” production, but it is quite contrived, said David Jays in The Guardian. Set over one evening, this is “the sort of play where characters representing useful debating positions happen to pop in, carrying crucial reports in buff envelopes”.

The themes debated – including Israel’s right to exist and defend itself, and notions of individual and collective responsibility – remain pertinent and important, said Nick Curtis in London’s The Standard; and there is a “pleasing economy to the way the family is used as a microcosm for a state and a people”. But “the way argument is loaded into the play feels forced”. This is a serious (“and at times seriously funny”) attempt to show how events in Gaza affect Jews elsewhere, “but also a clumsy one”.

Menier Chocolate Factory, London SE1. Until 2 May

In her lifetime, Anne Lister was mocked for her masculine appearance and dress, and unkindly nicknamed Gentleman Jack, said Allan Radcliffe in The Times. But more than 180 years after her death, the Yorkshire landowner and polymath has “acquired the status of national treasure”. Her secret encrypted diaries, discovered in the 1980s, revealed that she’d had numerous same-sex affairs and a symbolic marriage to a woman – leading to her being described as the “first modern lesbian”.

A recent BBC television drama series based on her life introduced her story to a far wider audience. But Northern Ballet’s impressive new narrative ballet is “more than an attempt to ride the coat-tails of Lister’s celebrity”. Choreographed by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, it “sets out to break the mould of traditional gender roles in dance”; with ingenious and novel touches, and clear, compelling storytelling, it is a sensuous success.

Although its subject matter is “progressive”, this is a formally “conventional” work with a tight narrative, long arabesques and great fluency, said Lyndsey Winship in The Guardian. Think of it as an “accessible, stylish production that happens to put the love between two women (three, actually) centre stage”. Gemma Coutts is a self-confident Lister, with a top hat, a frock coat and a “cocky motif” – a flick of the hip and the leg. But we also see the character’s romantic side, not least in an “erotically charged pas de deux on a dining table” with her great love Mariana (Saeka Shirai). Coutts, Shirai, and Rachael Gillespie – who plays Lister’s future wife, Ann Walker – are strong actors as well as dancers, and vividly convey the drama of the tale.

In truth, Lister’s is “not an obvious story to adapt”, said Holly Williams in The Telegraph. Her business interests included canals, railways, collieries and quarries; her story is also about being an outsider in the “boys’ club of business”. It’s tricky to fit fraught discussions about coal mines into a ballet, and fans of the TV show may miss its snappy dialogue. The evening is on far firmer ground when it comes to her love life. All told, this is a crisp, refreshing, contemporary ballet – and, at times, a “sexy delight”.

Ballet Black was founded in 2001 to provide dancers of Black and Asian descent with opportunities in classical ballet. Since then, the London-based company has more than fulfilled that ambition, said Sarah Crompton in The Observer – not least by commissioning some 70 new works. That is an “astonishing” feat, by a company that punches far “above its weight”.

Now, to mark its 25th anniversary, it has revived its Olivier-winning 2019 hit “Ingoma”, by the South African choreographer Mthuthuzeli November, a company alumnus, and paired it with “…all towards hope”, by the American choreographer Hope Boykin. “Ingoma”, about a strike in South Africa in 2012 when 34 miners were killed by police, is an intense and sophisticated work that “effectively conveys the suffering that is a part of resilience”. Boykin’s piece, an ode to togetherness, is “glorious” at times, but “struggles to sustain momentum”.

Boykin’s work opens this “crackingly good” double bill, said Sanjoy Roy in The Guardian. An abstract piece, with a jazzy score by Bill Laurance, it speaks (“often literally”, as Boykin reads her text) “of idealism, warmth, openness and community”, and I found it “entirely disarming”. With “an eloquence all its own”, the choreography blends neoclassical, contemporary and jazz dance to create “lovely skeins of motion: lines that ripple out and reform, sudden sprints that pull others into their tailwind, easy walks and heart-lifting sways that the dancers unaffectedly share with each other”. It’s celebratory, and very affecting.

“If Boykin’s piece shows off the company’s technical ability – and it does, to a great degree – November’s showcases the dancers’ impressive dramatic powers,” said Teresa Guerreiro in The Times.

The miners arrive on a crepuscular stage in boots and headlamps, their ensemble dances – “rhythmic stomping to driving percussion punctuated by voice calls” – taken directly from African tribal dances; but we also feel the impact on their families. The piece starts with a passionate duet, in which the wife of a miner (Isabela Coracy) clings to her husband (Ebony Thomas) as if for the last time. “It’s an emotional, heartfelt work.”

Lowry Theatre, Salford, from 14 April, then touring to 9 July

The RSC’s “inspiring” new musical is based on William Kamkwamba’s bestselling memoir, which recounts how – as a boy in Malawi – he built a wind turbine to save his village from drought.

A bookish teenager who defied philistinism at home and at school, William has shades of Roald Dahl’s “Matilda”, and even of “Billy Elliot”, said Dominic Cavendish in The Telegraph.

But “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” is an understated show, “earthier and simpler” than those mega-hits. In the first half, it gets a bit bogged down, as our “sweet-natured” hero ploughs on with his project – tinkering with transistors and marvelling at the workings of bicycle dynamos – despite the scoffing of his family and the taunts of his peers.

But after the interval, as drought takes hold, the evening starts to gain momentum. This “warm, West End-bound” show, with its “rousing songs” and lithe dancing, celebrates a “remarkable feat, the power of dreams and the value of knowledge”.

Kamkwamba’s story has been told before, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian – in the book, in Chiwetel Ejiofor’s 2019 film, and in Kamkwamba’s much-watched Ted Talk. But this musical “is its own distinct thing”.

Written by Tim Sutton and Richy Hughes, it’s “an exuberant creation”, with vivid costumes and “a gorgeous grass-roofed set”. There is a romantic storyline, and plenty of humour to leaven the tale’s hard edge; but it remains “insistently feel-good” even when hunger and famine arrive – as if no one dared diverge from the high mood.

And while the music features “superb percussion”, there are rather too many unmemorable numbers. This is “life-affirming” drama, “but it does not get you in the gut, or squeeze the heart”.

Part of the problem, said Clive Davis in The Times, is that William “often seems a bystander in his own story”. With multiple subplots and various villagers jostling for attention, he doesn’t quite come into focus. It is a “well-meaning” production, blessed by some fine performances, but it never quite takes flight.

The Australian writer-director Kip Williams was behind 2024’s hit West End staging of “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. Starring the “Succession” actress Sarah Snook, who played all the parts, Williams used “head-turning live-capture wizardry”, giant screens and pre-filmed sections to mesmeric effect.

Now he is back with a “radical” “Dracula”, in which the British film star Cynthia Erivo plays all 23 characters. It’s not “flawless” – not quite as frightening as you’d hope – but it’s a “tour de force” even so.

Erivo is “extraordinary”, said Nick Curtis in The London Standard. Juggling costumes, wigs and accents, and interacting with “onscreen versions of herself”, she has to walk “a knife edge between virtuosity and absurdity”, and pulls it off triumphantly.

This “Dracula” is certainly an astonishing technical achievement, said Dominic Maxwell in The Sunday Times. But it is also (“I’ll get the pun in early”) disappointingly “bloodless”. I wanted more dread, more drama and – paradoxically – more Erivo. Seemingly swamped at points by the technical wizardry, she is left struggling to connect with the audience.

The basic problem, said Andrzej Lukowski in Time Out, is that Erivo is required to “portray multiple characters of roughly the same importance at the same time”. Williams tries to get around this by making use of a lot more pre-recording than he did for “Dorian Gray”, but the result is that the “real” – onstage – Erivo mostly plays the less interesting parts. Some of the characters here “verge on stereotypes”, and the “ropey selection of wigs and facial hair that the pre-recorded Erivo sports add a weirdly goofy note to proceedings”.

Williams’ gimmicky camera-led approach “just about” worked with “Dorian Gray” because that is a story about narcissism, said Sarah Crompton on WhatsOnStage. This trick simply doesn’t fly with “Dracula”: it distances us from the dread, and “flattens rather than liberates the story”. I yearned for more “fever”, more “diabolism”, agreed Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. What Williams has given us is Dracula “defanged”.

Noël Coward Theatre, London WC2. Until 30 May

“If the new Archbishop of Canterbury needs a spot of encouragement in these turbulent times,” said Clive Davis in The Times, “she might take comfort in the fact that an old-school, well-made play about a Christian intellectual can still find an audience in the West End.” Although, of course, it helps that this “elegant revival” of “Shadowlands”, William Nicholson’s 1989 play about C.S. Lewis and his late-flowering love for the American poet Joy Davidman, features “a star as bankable” as Hugh Bonneville. The play packs a considerable spiritual and emotional journey into two hours, said Dominic Cavendish in The Telegraph. It features a slow-burn courtship, a romantic awakening, a shocking terminal illness and a crisis of faith. Yet Rachel Kavanaugh’s production gives the story “the vital, unifying aura of a restless, soulful quest”.

Bonneville is “wonderful” as the theologian and author of the Narnia novels, said Sarah Crompton on WhatsOnStage. He is awkward and endearing, but also catches Lewis’ “self-righteous stuffiness” and “self-imposed loneliness”. “The moments towards the close, when he is suddenly overwhelmed by feeling, are deeply affecting.” The “real star” of the show, though, is US actress Maggie Siff, said Patrick Marmion in the Daily Mail. As Joy, the American interloper who turns Lewis’ Oxford world of fusty regimentation and closeted misogyny upside down, she is superb.

I’m afraid I was unstirred by Bonneville’s “unstintingly mild-mannered performance”, said Alice Saville in The Independent. There is something “deeply joyless” about this play, with its “heavily romanticised” view of suffering, and “quote-worthy moralising” more suited to a fridge magnet than a great drama. “Shadowlands” is an “old-fashioned weepie” and, as such, it certainly has its charms, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. But here, “it just feels old- fashioned”: it plods slowly from one scene to the next, as “creaky as the half-filled, wood-panelled library” that forms its backdrop.

Aldwych Theatre, London WC2. Until 9 May

Tom Stoppard’s “teemingly intelligent” and “breezily witty” 1993 play “Arcadia” is often seen as his finest, said Nick Curtis in The London Standard. Unfolding in two separate timelines – 1809 and the 1990s – in the same room in a stately home in Derbyshire, it’s a “meditation on love, death and mathematics” that also encompasses poetry, landscape design, sex and more. Indeed, “Arcadia” “packs in more challenging matter than most writers would attempt in a lifetime” – but has the “seeming effortlessness of pure entertainment”.

What a shame Stoppard, who died in November aged 88, didn’t live to see its “triumphant return”, said Dominic Cavendish in The Telegraph. Carrie Cracknell’s production is presented in the round, beneath two elliptical lighting rigs that suggest planets in orbit. This creates a sense of “magnified scrutiny” that “grips like a thriller”. It’s a “must-see” production of a “masterpiece”.

Isis Hainsworth gives a “gorgeous” performance as Thomasina, the precocious teenager who, in 1809, is “buzzing with life, passion and intellectual brilliance”, said Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times. And she is “beautifully matched” by Seamus Dillane as the tutor who slowly realises she has a mind and spirit to cherish. In the present day, said Sarah Crompton on WhatsOnStage, the attraction between Prasanna Puwanarajah’s “odiously self-satisfied” academic Bernard and Leila Farzad’s gentler Hannah “registers less strongly. They seem a little self-consciously smart; the lines between them don’t always flex and fly.”

I enjoyed this revival, but only up to a point, said Robert Gore-Langton in The Mail on Sunday. Some of the cast seemed a bit “daunted” by the in-the-round staging, and while the “play’s long, spooling speeches on science and physics” should feel “tantalisingly just beyond our reach, here [they] seem like downright hard work. Pay attention at the back!” “Arcadia” is so clever, it “can make your head hurt”, agreed Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. But this production has an “inbuilt exuberance and is invigoratingly realised. It’s like a complicated piece of algebra, exquisite in its difficulties, unsolvable to the end.”

The Old Vic, London SE1. Until 21 March

During Rupert Goold’s “gilded” 13-year tenure at the Almeida Theatre, in north London, it has staged 72 shows, 14 of which have transferred to the West End, and 11 to Broadway. In that time, the powerhouse venue has also bagged 21 Oliviers, said Dominic Cavendish in The Telegraph, for plays including Mike Bartlett’s verse-drama “King Charles III” and James Graham’s “Ink”. It is quite a legacy for Goold – the “most exciting director of his generation” – who is now heading south of the river to take over at the Old Vic.

For his swansong in Islington, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian, Goold has restaged his debut production: an all-singing, all-dancing musical adaptation of “American Psycho”, Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 novel about a murderous Wall Street banker. In a typically slick, visually thrilling evening, the dark satire is “amped to ten” as it “sends up” 1980s yuppy culture. But the show “never spirals into kitsch, and our contemporary world of toxic masculinity, Trumpian capitalism and Insta-fuelled solipsism slowly, chillingly, creeps out of it”. Arty Froushan impresses as Patrick Bateman, the preppy boy-next-door who “turns gradually lunatic” (while being a lot less sinister than Christian Bale in the film version). Duncan Sheik’s score consists of “one great electrosynth number after another”, and there’s a “razor-sharp book” by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa.

The “catwalk-style stage” works brilliantly, said Alex Wood on What’s on Stage, especially for “dance-heavy moments”. Combined with imaginative use of video projections and often “garishly overwrought” lighting, like a “nightmarish 1980s music video”, the effect is “hypnotic”.

For all the “demonic razzle dazzle”, “American Psycho” is a “deadpan show with a downbeat story that sometimes feels in conflict with the maximalist nature of musical theatre”, said Andrzej Lukowski on Time Out. I am not sure it was really worth reviving, said Clive Davis in The Times. Sure, this production is slick and polished, but it hasn’t a lot to say. Watching it is “an oddly bloodless exercise in nostalgia, like being forced to sit through a re-run of ‘9½ Weeks’”.

Almeida Theatre, London N1. Until 14 March.

Having lost its Arts Council funding, National Theatre Wales folded in 2024. Risen from its ashes, said Dominic Cavendish in The Telegraph, is the new Welsh National Theatre, with the actor Michael Sheen “valiantly serving” as the company’s core funder and artistic director. He also takes the lead in its curtain-raiser – a touching staging of “Our Town”, Thornton Wilder’s 1938 classic about small-town life in America. The text is unchanged, and the design is faithful to the play’s setting – Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, at the turn of the 20th century. But a few Welsh place names have been added, along with Welsh-language hymns. “Beautifully directed by Francesca Goodridge, it’s a potent statement of intent with a spiritual frisson.”

All credit to Sheen. Long a champion of the arts in Wales, the actor, who lives near Port Talbot, has really put “his money where his mouth is”, said Dominic Maxwell in The Times. He also turns in a terrific performance: as the Stage Manager (the narrator and guide to Grover’s Corners), “he adds gravitas, wit, a sonorous soulfulness, and makes it all look easy as pie. Acting this good is rare and joyous.” The first two acts are done “pretty well”: jokes land, the balletic choreography enchants, and “whenever teenage lovebirds” Emily Webb (Yasemin Özdemir) and George Gibbs (Peter Devlin) are centre-stage, “it’s intimate and effective”. But it’s in the third and final act – when we discover that the tweeness was just a ruse – that everything comes together.

There were places where I found the evening a bit busy or strident, said Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times, but “this is still a beautiful production of a great, wise play”. And its message – about the value of community and “seizing hold of what really matters in life” – feels more vital than ever. Sheen will be appearing in the Welsh National Theatre’s next production too, said Sarah Crompton on WhatsOnStage – a new play by the “terrific” Gary Owen. “This revival of a slightly sentimental classic shows just what [Sheen] and this new company can achieve” – and it “makes the future look bright”.

Swansea Grand Theatre, until 31 January, then touring

“How do you capture the effect of one of the most groundbreaking novelists of all time?” said Rebecca Watson in the Financial Times. With the bar set “dauntingly high”, “Woolf Works” was “always going to have its work cut out”.

But choreographer Wayne McGregor “vividly” captures how it feels to read Virginia Woolf’s writing, injecting the ballet with a “charged quality” that draws you in. The show had its first run at London’s Royal Opera House back in 2015, and since then “I can’t stop going back”.

The three-act ballet is loosely based on three of Woolf’s books: “Mrs Dalloway”, “Orlando” and “The Waves”. McGregor “eschews straight narrative”, though, instead plunging us into “Woolf’s creative world” and examining her “obsessions and experience”. The music is a “vital part” of the show. Max Richter’s rich and varied score blends electronic sound with a live orchestra moving from “soaring poignancy to jaunty, offbeat observation”.

It’s a “dazzling” production, said Teresa Guerreiro in The Times. There is something “almost painterly” about the staging thanks in part to Ravi Deepres’ “deeply evocative” film of “white words swirling onto the black front curtain”, and, later, a “slow moving monochrome” projection of the “rebellious sea”. Lucy Carter’s lighting offers “bright turquoise laser beams, occasionally tempered with a shaft of red”, which add to the drama of the second section. And while the choreography “doesn’t always inspire”, the dancers are “outstanding”.

“No one divides opinion quite like Wayne McGregor,” said Jenny Gilbert on The Arts Desk. “He’s the closest thing to Marmite on the ballet scene” and will either excite you with the “brave-new-world qualities of his work” or put you off entirely. He successfully portrays the “brittle, agitated world” of Clarissa Dalloway and the “existential angst” of the characters but those who like knowing “who’s who and what’s what” should probably steer clear of “Woolf Works”. “Even those who’ve read the novels are at no great advantage.”

I found it “particularly powerful”, said Watson in the Financial Times. Both a “tribute and an invention”, the show is a “celebration twice over of what art can achieve”.

Until 13 February, Royal Opera House, London, rbo.org.uk

Alan Ayckbourn’s 1985 play “Woman in Mind” is one of this most prolific of playwright’s very best, said Claire Allfree in The Telegraph – a “form-bending exploration of psychiatric breakdown” that mixes his “particular blend of suburban comic pathos with a febrile dash of horror”. In Michael Longhurst’s “triumphant revival”, Sheridan Smith takes the lead role of Susan, a housewife who, after being hit on the head by a garden rake (“very Ayckbourn”), starts to hallucinate about a second family – one that is loving and wealthy, in contrast to her crushingly dull and cheerless one.

Unlike many of Ayckbourn’s plays – this was his 32nd, and he has written some 60 since – this “convoluted but bitterly funny farce” still feels “fresh”, said Robert Gore-Langton in The Mail on Sunday. The comic contrast between Susan’s two worlds is “thoroughly milked”. She thinks she’s sipping champagne; in reality, it’s cooking sherry. And by the end, Ayckbourn has embraced full experimental mode, “ramping up the weirdness” as even Susan’s fantasy family turns on her. It’s “brilliant” writing, performed here by a terrific cast, said Clive Davis in The Times. The playwright takes us inside a mind that is flitting from “one hallucination to another, yet the dialogue is delivered with a lightness of touch that generates nearly as many laughs as a well-crafted sitcom”.

This production has many fine elements, said Andrzej Lukowski in Time Out. The “lush but menacing” garden set impresses, as does the way Susan’s two worlds are “initially, jarringly divided by a partially raised safety curtain”. Smith switches mood brilliantly and sometimes thrillingly between them. And Romesh Ranganathan makes a creditable West End debut as the doctor who lives next door. Yet in the end, I wasn’t sure what point Ayckbourn “was trying to make beyond a technical exercise”. Ultimately, this play – more artifice than heart – conveys little about loneliness, middle-aged sexuality, or even mental health. “There is something melancholic and Chekhovian at its core, but it’s deep, deep beneath the surface, obscured by an all-consuming conceptual glamour.”

Duke of York’s Theatre, London WC2

Director Tom Littler brings a “sparkier” version of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s first play to life at the Orange Tree in Richmond, southwest London, said Heather Neill on The Arts Desk. With the “ever-elegant” Patricia Hodge taking on the role of Mrs Malaprop and the “skipping pace” of this rendition, there is “never a dull moment”.

Instead of the original story’s 1775 set-up, Littler takes the action to 1927. This updated setting allows for references to “cars and a telephone box” and also lets set designers Anett Black and Neil Irish conjure a “fantasy Twenties world” with “attractive gilded art deco friezes and colourful period costumes”.

Littler has “successfully married old and new” in this “craftily edited rejig”, said Dominic Cavendish in The Telegraph. The story follows Jack Absolute (Kit Young), who tries to woo Lydia in the guise of the “lowly sergeant Beverley to indulge her sentimental ideas about poverty”. His false identity paves the way for “spiralling confusions”.

The “slick and colourful” revival is a “more faithful update” than other adaptations, said Dominic Maxwell in The Times. The show is elevated by “savvy comic performances that largely stop short of caricature”. Robert Bathurst presents a “robust, unselfish” Sir Anthony Absolute, while Zoe Brough as Lydia Languish and Boadicea Ricketts as Julia Melville deliver performances that are “very now without feeling laboured”.

Sheridan’s work had a “sharp satirical bite” at the time, said Dave Fargnoli on The Stage, but the “social comedy” doesn’t hold as much weight today. Still, Littler makes up for it by “leaning into the farcical plot” and “amping up the silliness” with extra gags. With its “colourful costumes” and “Charleston-style choreography”, “The Rivals” is a “thoroughly entertaining” spectacle that makes for a “lively” evening.

At the Orange Tree Theatre, London, until 24 January, then Theatre Royal Bath (27-31 January) and The Arts Theatre, Cambridge (3-7 February).

Cole Escola’s comedy about the life of Mary Todd Lincoln has been a smash hit in New York, said Dominic Cavendish in The Telegraph. A “knowingly bogus” portrait of the former US first lady as a volatile dipsomaniac and frustrated cabaret star, the show has been running on Broadway since June 2024, and has won two Tonys. Now “Oh, Mary!” has arrived in London, and it deserves the same success here.

It’s more “snappy lark” than history lesson, and it’s no “Hamilton”. But its “transgressive charge” is laced with a truth about the necessity of self-expression, and as the pale-faced, rouge-cheeked protagonist, the brilliant American actor Mason Alexander Park “gives the funniest performance in town”.

This unashamedly silly show “won’t be to everyone’s taste”, said Sarah Crompton on WhatsOnStage. But it is “absolutely and uniquely itself, an irreverent, counter-historical delight”. Park is an impressive comedic performer, “pinging around the room like a human special effect”, said Andrzej Lukowski in Time Out. But after all the US critics described “laughing so hard” during the show they suffered life-changing injuries, I was taken aback by its “broad, dated” Benny Hill-style humour. The actors play it with conviction, and there’s some fine physical comedy. But the central conceit – that Abraham Lincoln was a closeted gay man, and his wife a “borderline feral” narcissist – is just not that funny, or interesting.

I sat stony-faced through “the whole sorry fandango”, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. Featuring “‘American Pie’-levels of puerile humour”, and going for the kind of “low-hanging fruit that Kenny Everett’s team might have rejected”, the show feels long at 80 minutes. Others in the audience seemed to be relishing the high jinks, but where was the “story, character, wit or wonder”? I’m not opposed to camp fun, said Clive Davis in The Times. I absolutely loved “Titanique”, for instance. But “Oh, Mary!” is just infantile. “A clown is in the White House, and this show is riding high on Broadway. Can things get any madder?”

Trafalgar Theatre, London SW1. Until 26 April

Stephen Sondheim’s 1986 musical “Into the Woods” is “the work of a genius at the peak of his powers”, said Andrzej Lukowski in Time Out. With a “tremendous” book by James Lapine, it draws on fairy tales including “Cinderella”, “Rapunzel”, “Jack and the Beanstalk” and “Little Red Riding Hood”, and pushes these “familiar stories into absurd, existential, eventually very moving territory. It’s both playful and profound, mischievous and sincere, cleverly meta but also a ripping yarn”.

Sondheim’s lyrics are by turns bathetic, audacious and poignant, and his lush score of baroque nursery rhymes “feels as vividly alive as the forest itself”. It’s a “sublime but fiddly” piece that is rarely revived because it’s hard to pull off, and requires a large cast of first-rate singing actors. So enormous credit is due to Jordan Fein: his new production “smashes it”.

Fein is the American director who has previously impressed with a stripped-back “Oklahoma!” and a “glorious” “Fiddler on the Roof”, said Clive Davis in The Times. Now, he has worked wonders with material that can risk sinking “under the weight of its outsized ambitions”. This magnificently acted production is “hypnotic” – but also “sharp, propulsive and often very funny”. And it boasts “stunning” set and costume designs by Tom Scutt and “extraordinarily atmospheric” lighting by Aideen Malone. “It’s hard to imagine a production that does a better job of tying all the themes and subthemes together.”

All the actors are on “blazing musical form”, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian, and each finds a moment to excel. To pick standouts is invidious, but as the wicked Witch, Kate Fleetwood is “phenomenal both in and out of song”. Jamie Parker and Katie Brayben, as the Baker and his Wife, “bring a truth and sincerity to every note they sing” and every line they speak, said Sarah Crompton on WhatsOnStage; they are the heart of this sophisticated, clever and confident revival. “It’s a great production of a terrific show. A fine way to end a year of musicals.”

Bridge Theatre, London SE1. Until 30 May

This new musical adaptation of “Treasure Island” is “the perfect show” for the holidays, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. Indeed, Paul Foster’s production at the Bristol Old Vic – which brings Robert Louis Stevenson’s tale to life amid a modern-day pub storytelling competition – “is so finely wrought it warrants a much longer life”.

Jake Brunger (book and lyrics) and Pippa Cleary (music and lyrics) were responsible for “The Great British Bake Off Musical” (2022). That was a “sweet but lightweight” concoction; this is “saltier and more satisfying”. Lustily performed by eight actor-musicians, and infused with a love of Bristol and its maritime heritage, it “combines comic touches and modern flourishes” with traditional “swashbuckling derring-do”. If I have a gripe, it’s that there are too many mood-setting numbers. Otherwise, this looks like a very hearty hit that is certain to “shiver your timbers”.

What sets this enchanting show apart is the “confidence of its makers”, said Kris Hallett on What’sOnStage. “The songs are genuine earworms, lyrics crisp and playful, the score darting from Spanish pop and calypso to hints of Sondheim.” And there is a real charm to Tom Rogers’ design, with its vast map of Bristol that peels away to reveal ship and island – a flourish that has both “grandeur and theatrical simplicity”.

The cast impress, too. Adryne Caulder-James’ performance as a gender-flipped Jim Hawkins is “brave, sharp and mercifully unsentimental”. As Long John Silver, Colin Leggo is “part villain, part wary mentor”. Comedian Jayde Adams “shines as both MC and an energetically oddball” Ben Gunn. All in all, it’s an “inviting night of family-friendly theatre”.

I could have done with a bit more of a sense of menace, said Rachel Halliburton in The Times. Still, the energy, great singing and Adams’ comedic skill carry things along, and by the end, even the most “rum-sozzled cynic” would find the evening hard to resist.

Filled with puppetry, sword fights and “rousing melodies”, this terrific entertainment “shrieks with life”, said Anya Ryan in The Guardian. “There are no Christmas carols here, but this adventure leaves you with a warm, seasonal glow.”

Bristol Old Vic, until 10 January

As often happens at this time of year, “A Christmas Carol” has lately been “outdoing London buses”, said Ron Simpson on WhatsOnStage – with several great productions coming along at the same time. There are two in Yorkshire alone. At Leeds Playhouse (until 17 January), director Amy Leach has revived Deborah McAndrew’s vivid and assured adaptation, first staged in Hull, eight years ago. Back then, the setting was the Humber docks, where Ebenezer Scrooge worked as a trader and manufacturer.

For Leeds, Dickens’s old miser has been turned into a West Riding factory boss – once again rooting the story in 19th century industry – and “it works perfectly”. There’s a brass band, carols (of course), and leading the large cast of actors and musicians is Reece Dinsdale, who delivers a “tour de force” central performance. It’s a “wonderfully designed” and handsome show, said Matt Barton in The Stage, with a superb set that fills the stage with fiery factory chimneys.

The trick for any new version of this festive favourite is to “present it with the vitality that Dickens intended”, rather than with “deadening reverence”, said Mark Brown in The Telegraph. At Sheffield Crucible (until 10 January) adapter Aisha Khan and director Elin Schofield have done just that, to produce a “moving and ultimately joyous adaptation”. The show bristles with creative innovations, most notably the singing of traditional carols that are unique to Sheffield and South Yorkshire. “One can’t help but think that Dickens – whose readings took him to locations across Britain – would have approved of such a charming way of giving his story a local resonance.” The energetic and multitasking cast is impressive across the board. Ian Midlane delivers a self-doubting Scrooge, and brilliantly conveys the “ferocity of his breakdown and the giddy joy of his redemption”, said Ron Simpson on WhatsOnStage.

In London, Mark Gatiss’s highly praised, spooky and spinetingling adaptation has returned to the Alexandra Palace Theatre for the third year running (until 4 January). This year it stars Neil Morrissey as Marley’s ghost and Matthew Cottle as Scrooge. On the other side of the Thames, the Old Vic’s “carol-singing, deluxe mince pie” of “A Christmas Carol” (until 10 January) makes its north London rival look like a newcomer, as it is now in its ninth year, said Dominic Maxwell in The Times. Paul Hilton is not as famous as some of the actors who’ve played Scrooge at this theatre – but he delivers one of the best performances to date, bringing an edgy, “off-kilter charisma” to the role. The Old Vic’s has always been a traditional, comfort-and-joy-filled production, and it still makes for a “tremendous” evening.

Leeds Playhouse, Sheffield Crucible, London’s Alexandra Palace Theatre & The Old Vic

In the Young Vic’s big opening for December, the “talking ghost of a tiger haunts the streets of the battle-ravaged Iraqi capital while ruminating on the nature of existence”, said Dzifa Benson in The Telegraph. That sounds like a tough sell. And Rajiv Joseph’s Pulitzer-nominated play – originally staged on Broadway with Robin Williams as the tiger – has taken 14 years to cross the Atlantic.

But in the capable hands of director Omar Elerian, and featuring an astonishing central performance from Kathryn Hunter, this multi-layered and “engrossing” tragi-comedy about the absurdities of war proves to be “funny, profound, must-see theatre”.

Joseph’s “madly surreal” and “quietly humane” play is based on a real event, said Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times. In 2003, a starving Bengal tiger in Baghdad’s zoo was shot by an American soldier after it mauled his comrade’s hand. The playwright takes this as his jumping-off point for an incident-light drama in which the tiger prowls the burning city, haunting its killer and looking for God. The main (human) characters are Kev and Tom, the two US soldiers, and an Iraqi man, Musa, who used to work as a gardener for Saddam Hussein’s sadistic son, Uday – and who is now acting as an interpreter for the invading forces.

The play gets “over-entangled in its philosophising in places”. But Hunter, who stepped into the role at the last minute to replace the unwell David Threlfall, is “superb” – and Elerian’s production “spins on a dime between terrifying violence, quiet reflection and mordant humour”.

“This will undoubtedly be a Marmite show,” said Nick Curtis in The London Standard. I found it “wickedly funny”, and the boldness of its imagery made it possible for me to forgive its bagginess. Joseph, it is fair to say, “makes little concession to normal audience expectations of coherence. But for me this seems a work of massive swings, almost all of which connect with profound force.” I fell on the other side of the fence, said Dominic Maxwell in The Times. Hunter seizes her moment with the “aplomb of an acerbic stand-up comic”, and there are some “nice lines”. But “mostly, this is Beckettian milling about by desperate people in a ruined world. A strong theatrical flavour, in short, and not one for me.”

Young Vic, London SE1. Until 31 January

This “witty”, musical retelling of the story of a magical, nose-lengthening puppet is a “heartwarming” celebration of “curiosity” and “acceptance”, said Aliya Al-Hassan in WhatsOnStage. In the Renaissance setting of Shakespeare’s Globe, it’s the “perfect family show” and that’s “no lie”.

It is “truly enchanting” to watch traditional puppetry at a time when we’re “bombarded by artificially created images”. Interacting seamlessly with the human characters, Pinocchio is “masterfully” handled by puppeteers Stan Middleton, Aya Nakamura and Andrea Sadler. “The audience falls in love with him almost instantly.”

Charlie Josephine’s “funny and touching script” and Sean Holmes’ expansive direction transforms Carlo Collodi’s original book into a “snappy” production, with “plenty for everyone to enjoy”.

The 14-person cast brings “full-tilt fun” to the stage with the help of Vicki Igbokwe-Ozoagu’s “inventive” choreography, said Lucinda Everett in The Guardian. And the show’s “biggest success” is the transformation of puppet inventor Geppetto: Nick Holder brings “heart and humour” to the role, taking the audience on his journey from “nervous caregiver to fully fledged father”.

This show is a breath of fresh air amid the “annual slosh of panto and exhausted West End festive musicals”, said Claire Allfree in The Telegraph. The Globe is “naturally suited” to folklore and fairytales, and “the production leans into its theatrical setting” with a set like “an old-fashioned puppet theatre” with “red curtains and moveable cardboard cutouts”.

It is “miles away” from the Disney version, said Alice Saville in The Independent. Although it “does surprisingly little to extend a warm, interactive welcome” to children in the audience, which makes the early scenes feel a bit “stodgy”, the music by Jim Fortune soon livens things up with “foot-stomping Renaissance bops, dark bluesy numbers, and rabble-rousing rock ’n’ roll”.

Pinocchio is, above all, a story of transformation and enchantment, said Allfree in The Telegraph. And this production “embraces the idea to the hilt”.

Until 4 January; shakespearesglobe.com

There is something of a “modern obsession with cynically adapting films for the theatre”, said Holly Williams in The Times. But when it comes to the Royal Exchange’s “gloriously cheering” new Christmas show, all is forgiven – and then some.

“Singin’ in the Rain” (1952) is a “simply perfect film, and with all its singin’ and dancin’ and showbiz glitz”, it’s a perfect fit for the stage. Raz Shaw directs with “visual panache and knowing wit”, and if the satire is broad, it’s also enormous fun. The cast is top notch: when they dance or sing, you “swoon with them”. And “while I’m a sucker for any tap-dancing sequence, there is something particularly thrilling about seeing Alistair David’s tightly drilled yet playful choreography performed in the round” at this circular venue. Forget the rain: this production is “pure bottled sunshine”.

“From the moment the band strikes up that unmistakable MGM shimmer, the production glides confidently between homage and reinvention,” said Amanda Dunlop on WhatsOnStage. For this much-loved tale – about the shift in Tinseltown from the silent movies to the talkies in the 1920s, and its impact on two established stars – the Exchange has been transformed into a “snow globe of tap shoes, twinkling lights and old-Hollywood glitz”.

In the Gene Kelly role, Louis Gaunt offers a “winning mix of matinee-idol swagger and self-mocking charm” in a performance “that would bring a Broadway audience to their feet”. And Danny Collins has “quicksilver energy” and “perfect comedic delivery” as his best friend, Cosmo Brown.

The women are equally fabulous, said Mark Brown in The Telegraph. Laura Baldwin is a “comic delight” as Lina Lamont, the egotistical silent movie star whose grating speaking voice (“Can’t a goil get a woid in edgeways?”) is threatening to kill her career, and Carly Mercedes Dyer shines as the aspiring actress who is hired to record over it secretly.

With relatively little in the way of set, this show is carried along by its terrific cast and its “high-energy” choreography, said Catherine Love in The Guardian. In a time of incessant “doom-scrolling”, this “Singin’ in the Rain” feels both “necessary and infectious. By the puddle-stomping finale, resistance is futile.”

Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester. Until 25 January

How do you solve a problem like Maria? In this handsome and wonderfully sung Christmas production at Leicester’s Curve – a venue with a “truly impressive musical pedigree” – Molly Lynch solves it with “sass”, “girlish abandon” and “rockabilly vim”, said Clive Davis in The Times. Some Marias are too demure for their own good; here, though, it’s clear from the off why the Mother Abbess (Joanna Riding) thinks this young novice should spend some time out in the world.

Lynch is superb as Maria, “bringing warmth, charm, and vulnerability to the role with effortless grace”, agreed Amarjeet Singh on What’sOnStage. And hers is just one of several “stunning performances” in Nikolai Foster’s captivating and beautifully designed show – including from David Seadon-Young as Captain von Trapp, who is less of a martinet than usual, and more demonstrably grief-stricken.

You know what you’re getting from “The Sound of Music” (“nuns, Nazis, Do-Re-Mi”) – but this “richly entertaining revival honours its serious intent”, said David Jays in The Guardian. Of course, people love Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical for its “lashings of melody” and “prickle-eyed love story”. The tale, however, is also one of “personal loss, political integrity and the healing power of music”. This production “ripples with feeling, especially in the first half”, which boasts the musical’s biggest songs. And if the second half is busier with plot and reprises, Seadon-Young still “delivers ‘Edelweiss’ with a memorably forlorn defiance”.

I’d have liked more chemistry between the leads, said Holly Williams in The Daily Telegraph. But Lynch is “wonderful with the children, leading sing-alongs and skip-a-thons with a bell-clear, enjoyably old-fashioned-sounding voice and an enthusiasm warm enough to melt the most cynical heart”. Michael Taylor’s set is a stunning wintery Austria of silver birches and snowy peaks. And the Nazis’ simmering presence, which “creeps in around all the edges” of Foster’s production in a range of deft, well-thought-out touches, brings a usefully dark undertone to a show that can risk seeming twee. In sum: “festive bliss”.

Curve Theatre, Leicester. Until 17 January

Hitting the panto headlines this year was former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s cameo role as the Wizard of Oz-lington in a mash-up of “Wicked” and “The Wizard of Oz” at a north London theatre, which also featured Sir Ian McKellen as Toto the Dog. But there are plenty of other pantos to catch up and down the UK, bringing laughs and dazzling performances until the festive season is “behind you”!

Mama Goose, Theatre Royal Stratford East, London

In 2025, we may be familiar with the sight of “Elon Musk as a pantomime villain”, but in what is perhaps a world-first, you have the pleasure of seeing a “panto villain as Elon Musk” at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, said The Guardian. “Mama Goose” takes wacky to the next level, and is chock-a-block with “afrobeat-tinged music”, an “AI love interest”, and “satirical sideswipes”. With “stellar performances” and a cast “clearly having a ball”, this is a “panto to cherish”.

Theatre Royal Stratford East, until 3 January

Jack and the Beanstalk, Bristol Hippodrome

“Live music, vibrant costumes, stunning sets and breathtaking special effects” sum up this fun take on the iconic panto show, said Radio Times. Will Young makes his panto debut as the magical Spirit of the Beans for this “unforgettable adventure”. Expect a lot of farce and silliness, with plenty of audience participation. It’s perfect for young children, and those under 18 months can sit on your lap for free.

Bristol Hippodrome, until 4 January

Cinderella: A Fairytale, Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh

Sally Cookson’s “celebrated adaptation” is guaranteed to “delight the whole family”, said Edinburgh News. Her modern take on the panto classic (still with the resplendent Queen’s Ball!) combines music and puppetry, promising a festive production that “adds a magical flutter of wings to happily ever after”.

Royal Lyceum Theatre, until 3 January

Robin Hood, Manchester Opera House

This Northern panto is steeped in tradition, with “all the bells and whistles” of a festive performance, said The Telegraph. Local hero and stand-up star Jason Manford joins the production for the fourth year in a row, this time starring as Robin Hood, following previous performances in “Cinderella”, “Jack and the Beanstalk”, and “Peter Pan”. At his side is comedian, impressionist and “Britain’s Got Talent” finalist Ben Nickless as one of his Merry Men. Strap in for a rollicking ride, full of laughter, slapstick and “surely the odd local Oasis gag”.

Manchester Opera House, until 4 January

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, Kent

“Miranda” and “Horrible Histories” favourite Sarah Hadland stars as the “dastardly” Wicked Queen in the classic panto tale, said Paul Vale in The Stage. Off the back of the “Strictly Come Dancing” final in 2024, you can expect some “wicked choreography” from her and all the cast. The Canterbury venue, which has had “regular wins at the UK Pantomime Awards”, promises “powerhouse vocals” and heaps of fun. Undoubtedly, this annual show is the “jewel” in their “crown”.

Marlowe Theatre, until 11 January

Sleeping Beauty, London Palladium

The Palladium panto is celebrating its tenth anniversary, “which is remarkable” as it “feels like London’s biggest festive show has been around forever”, said Time Out. The cast is dripping with talent, including audience-favourite Julian Clary, whose “every utterance is a virtuosically smutty innuendo that blessedly sails over the heads of primary-schoolers”. He plays King Julian, and is supported by comedy great Catherine Tate, as Carabosse the Wicked Fairy. Panto hall-of-famers Paul Zerdin and Nigel Havers complete the frontline cast: with that formula, it’s hard to see how it can be anything other than another “blockbuster” show.

London Palladium, until 11 January

Paddington has travelled a long way since Michael Bond created him in 1958, said Sarah Crompton on What’s on Stage. After the vast success of the three films, it was perhaps inevitable that a musical would be next. What wasn’t inevitable is that Tom Fletcher (music and lyrics) and Jessica Swale (book) would “fashion a show so emotionally and tonally perfect that the entire audience is enraptured from the moment the bear steps on stage – and keeps cooing and oohing, laughing and sobbing, until the very end”. State-of-the-art animatronics, a stunning set, fabulous performances and witty songs about marmalade – all combine in a show that will “fill you with joy and melt your heart”, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. “Paddington” is the “new ‘Mary Poppins’: a well-known story imaginatively staged, immaculately performed and utterly winning”.

The bear himself, designed by Tahra Zafar, is “a triumph”, said Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times. “Endearing but not too cute, he has the slightly lived-in look of every favourite soft toy”, and is brilliantly brought to life by the “wonderfully nimble” Arti Shah, who wears the bear suit onstage – and James Hameed, who speaks and sings from offstage, while remotely controlling his facial movements. The result is a bear who is “astonishingly expressive”, said David Benedict in Variety. Other highlights of this “completely beguiling” show include Luke Sheppard’s direction; Victoria Hamilton-Barritt’s high-camp turn as the “arch-villainess” taxidermist Millicent Clyde; and Amy Booth-Steel, who wrings “every conceivable laugh” from a string of minor parts.

I’ll admit to some “rumbling reservations”, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. It’s a little “overstuffed with songs”, and not as witty as the films. But the stronger second half convinced me that this “funny, feel-good, family-friendly musical” will “run and run”. Today’s West End is rammed with “ill-considered riffs on big-name franchises”, said Alice Saville in The Independent. But with “Paddington”, we’re finally getting a show “made with serious heart, dedication, and enough spectacular special effects to thrill its audiences”.

Savoy Theatre, London WC2. Until 25 October

Sir Tom Stoppard, who has died aged 88, “wrote plays of dazzling language, intricate wit and dependably intelligent characterisation that touched on everything from quantum physics and landscape gardening to moral positivism and the lives of minor characters in ‘Hamlet’”, said The Daily Telegraph.

Over his long and distinguished career, “Stoppard, who had never been to university, was credited with bringing ideas back into British theatre”. The word “Stoppardian” became “shorthand for rapid-fire wit” and “shimmering wordplay”, and for dramatising complex ideas in a way that both flattered audiences and amused them.

‘A bounced Czech’

The critic Kenneth Tynan argued that the key to understanding Stoppard was never to forget that he was an émigré: because he had no native land or mother tongue, he was freed from the cultural constraints that restrict other writers.

Stoppard joked that he was “a bounced Czech”: he was born Tomáš Sträussler, in Zlín, a small town in Czechoslovakia, in 1937. His father, Eugen, was a doctor at the Bata shoe company. When Tom was one year old, the family fled the Nazis to Singapore. When it fell to the Japanese in 1942, Tom, his mother Martha and his older brother Petr escaped to India; but Eugen was detained.

“The past was rarely spoken of” during his childhood. “It was only much later Tom learnt that his family was Jewish, that most of his relatives had perished in the death camps, and that his father had died on a Japanese prison ship.”

In India in 1945, Martha married an English army officer, Major Kenneth Stoppard, who believed, Tom said, “like Cecil Rhodes, that to have been born an Englishman was to have drawn first prize in the lottery of life”. The family lived in Darjeeling, but after independence they moved to Britain. Tom took his stepfather’s name, and was sent to board at Pocklington Grammar School in Yorkshire, which he hated: he was “an average student, a first XI cricketer and the target of bullies”.

He left school at 17 to become a reporter on the Western Daily Press. (Later, he applied for a job as a political reporter on the London Evening Standard. The editor, Charles Wintour, sternly asked him: “So tell me boy, who is the current foreign secretary?” “Look,” Stoppard replied. “I said I was interested in politics, not obsessed with it.”) “His beat as a reporter took him to the Bristol Old Vic,” said Michael Coveney in The Guardian. In the late 1950s, he saw Peter O’Toole play Hamlet and Jimmy Porter in “Look Back in Anger”. “He was hooked.”

Stoppard had some early plays accepted by the BBC for radio, and wrote a novel, today largely forgotten. Then came “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”, which features two courtiers from “Hamlet” mulling existence on the sidelines of the action. It was first staged on the Edinburgh Fringe in 1966. When it opened at the Old Vic, it made him an overnight celebrity. Harold Hobson in The Sunday Times called it the most important event in British theatre since Harold Pinter’s “The Birthday Party” nine years earlier. “The influence of Samuel Beckett was palpable”, as were elements of Kafka and European absurdism, “but this was the first play to use another as its decor.” When asked what it was about, Stoppard, who had a lifelong reluctance to discuss his work, answered: “It’s about to make me very rich.”

He followed it with two plays of “pyrotechnical brilliance”, “Jumpers” (1972) which satirised moral philosophy by comparing it to a gymnastic display, and “Travesties” (1974), which was inspired by the discovery that Vladimir Lenin, James Joyce and the Dadaist poet Tristan Tzara were all living in Zürich in 1917; they are “enmeshed in a performance of ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’... as unreliably recalled by a minor consular official engaged in a dispute with Joyce over a pair of trousers”.

By this point, Stoppard had “exhausted the vein of travesty” and his output “slowed considerably, with perhaps a really good new play emerging each decade”, said The Times. He had rarely aimed for realism, and he had been criticised for failing to portray real people and for a lack of social conscience. “I burn with no causes,” he admitted. “I write plays because dialogue is the most respectable way of contradicting myself,” he said. That began to change with “The Real Thing” (1982), “a tale of adultery among theatre folk” that was also an exploration of the place of politics in art. “Reality took a bow” in 1991, when Stoppard and his frequent leading lady, Felicity Kendal, left their respective spouses for each other.

Taking on his ‘own personal history’

Stoppard’s first wife was Jose Ingle, a nurse; the marriage lasted from 1965 to 1972. His second wife was Dr Miriam Stoppard, the agony aunt and anti-smoking campaigner whom he had married in 1972 (Stoppard as a lifelong smoker). There were two sons from each marriage, including Ed Stoppard, the actor. Stoppard remained in a relationship with Kendal until 1998, and she starred in many of his plays of the period, including “Arcadia” (1993), which was “classic Stoppard”: a story that ranged from “the age of Byron to that of chaos theory”.

Stoppard often claimed he wasn’t politically engaged enough to know where to place himself, but he was an admirer of Margaret Thatcher, and during the Cold War he was quietly active among dissident groups in the Eastern Bloc. These themes surfaced in “Rock ’n’ Roll” (2006), a “discourse on liberty” about a Czech rock group’s challenge to the communist regime.

Stoppard’s contributions to cinema – “official and unofficial” – were prolific, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph. Among many others, he wrote the screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s “Empire of the Sun” (1987), and co-wrote those for Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil” (1985) and “Shakespeare in Love” (1998), for which he won an Oscar. He also had a very lucrative “shadow career” as a script doctor, working on everything from “Beethoven” (1992) to “Sleepy Hollow” (1999) to “The Bourne Ultimatum” (2007).

In his last play, “Leopoldstadt” (2020), which traces the fate of a Jewish family in middle Europe during the first half of the 20th century, Stoppard “took on his own personal history”, said Bruce Weber in The New York Times. “In a kind of apologia for a lifetime of obliviousness to the oppression and tragedy of many of his relatives”, he concludes with a scene of a Tom Stoppard-like character, an escapee as a child from fascism, visiting the city of his birth. Learning the fates of his family, he breaks down in tears – as did many audience members. Stoppard was knighted in 1997. He is survived by his third wife, Sabrina Guinness, whom he married in 2014, and with whom he lived in Dorset.

The last time Bryan Cranston teamed up with Belgian theatre director Ivo van Hove – for “Network” at the National Theatre, then Broadway – it bagged the “Breaking Bad” star Olivier and Tony awards for best actor. “Only a fool would bet against a repeat triumph now,” said Fiona Mountford in The i Paper. I have never seen a better production of “All My Sons”, Arthur Miller’s 1947 classic about a toxic filial inheritance, and the rotten heart of the American dream. In this stunning new production, playing at just over two hours without an interval, the drama assumes the “grim yet towering momentum, inexorability and universality of a Greek tragedy”. Cranston, as Joe Keller, gives a “magnificent performance of craggy, rugged resilience tempered with affability”.

Cranston and Marianne Jean-Baptiste, playing his wife Kate, are “pitch perfect” as a couple “shutting out unbearable wartime truths”, said Nick Curtis in The London Standard. Their son, Larry, a pilot, has been missing in action for three years, while Joe’s business partner has been convicted of supplying defective equipment that cost pilots’ lives. Hayley Squires lends a “quiet gravitas” to Ann, Larry’s former girlfriend. But for all the first-rate acting on show, the performance “you walk out talking about” is that of Paapa Essiedu as the Kellers’ surviving son Chris, said Dominic Maxwell in The Times. His “ascent from affable shrugs to righteous rants is plausible, compelling, freshly minted”.

It’s rare to see a group of actors “this brilliant gel so completely”, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. And the symbolist sparseness of Jan Versweyveld’s set design “drives the production further into the realm of the epic and timeless”. An old felled tree lies across the stage in the opening scene, while the Kellers’ house has a strange circular window that also transforms into something more elemental – variously the Sun and the Moon. There is “so much alchemy” in this dazzling production. “Every scene is strong, no actor stealing the show, each raising the power of the ensemble as a whole.”

Wyndham’s Theatre, London WC2. Until 7 March

Getting lost in the wonders of the ballet, unwinding with a tinselly comedy, taking in an immersive festive drama: theatre is a great way to get in the mood for Christmas. This year, there are some excellent Christmas shows being staged around the UK.

Sherlock Holmes and the 12 Days of Christmas, Birmingham

Sherlock and Watson face “a seasonal challenge” to find gold rings and save French hens in this comedy whodunnit written by Humphrey Ker and David Reed, said Clive Davis in The Times. The writer duo also take on the roles of the mystery-solving pair, while John Kearns plays “Scotland Yard stalwart”, Inspector Lestrade. The production features “a sprinkling of original songs” by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, adding some musical theatre to the Victorian costume caper. Suitable for age 10 plus.
14 November-18 January; birmingham-rep.co.uk

Bananas for Christmas, Inverness

This bubbly and light-hearted show follows a “pair of banana-loving beach-dwellers” who get a bit tangled up in tinsel, said Mark Fisher in The Guardian. Produced by the “excellent Moray-based children’s company”, Frozen Charlotte, it’s an inclusive and welcoming celebration of friendship, fun and the magic of Christmas. Suitable from nursery age up; some relaxed performances.
11-24 December; eden-court.co.uk

The Royal Ballet’s Nutcracker, London

The story of “The Nutcracker” is “almost impossible for a producer to mould into a coherent narrative”, said Dan Cavendish in The Telegraph. And yet “that is exactly” what choreographer Peter Wright has done with his legendary staging for The Royal Ballet. His “knack for lucid storytelling has seldom served him better” and the design is both “opulent and night-before-Christmas cosy”. Highlights include Act One’s transformation scene, which leaves “little ones wide-eyed in wonder”, and a magnificent house orchestra that makes Tchaikovsky’s “magical score fly”. Suitable for age five plus.
22 November-5 January; rbo.org.uk

Gawain and The Green Knight, London

Not all Christmas shows are “just for kids”, said Andrzej Lukowski in Time Out. Adults looking for some stagey festive fun have options, too. “Gawain and The Green Knight”, is “pretty damn alternative”, as far as Christmas shows go. The comedy reframes the medieval romance, setting it at an office Christmas party for Camelot Corp, where “jobsworth middle manager” Gawain tries to kick out a “gatecrashing knight” in the hopes of wowing his boss, Arthur. Suitable for age 13 plus.
10-24 December; parktheatre.co.uk

A Christmas Carol, Belfast

Back after its “acclaimed run last year”, Marie Jones’ adaptation of the classic Dickens tale is set in Belfast and “staged as a play within a play”, said Mark Fisher in The Guardian. You watch the show being put on by the “Pottinger Players, a band of working-class actors who know all about poverty and exploitation” – adding another dimension to the story. Dan Gordon reprises his role as Scrooge. Suitable for age eight plus.
28 November-10 January; lyrictheatre.co.uk

Nutcracker in Havana Tour, various locations

Cuban-British ballet dancer Carlos Acosta’s colourful reimagining of the classic Christmas ballet breathes Latin flavour into Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece. The inspiration for this “feelgood rewrite” is Acosta‘s “Cuban childhood”, said Debra Craine in The Times. But, yes, there are still “dancing snowflakes”, even though “it may never snow in Havana”. The production is touring the UK, from London to Aberdeen. Suitable for age eight plus.
18 November-11 February; musicalsontour.co.uk

It can be easy for Othello – manipulated and out-argued by Iago – to end up “looking like a sideshow” in the play that bears his name, said Susannah Clapp in The Observer. In Tom Morris’s new production, however, David Harewood is in command from the moment he strides onto the stage in general’s uniform. In 1997, he became the first black actor to play Othello at the National Theatre. Then, his performance was “impressive but sometimes strenuous”. Here, he is “utterly at ease in the entire range of the part”.

An uneven production is redeemed by the acting, agreed Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. Harewood proves to be a “great, under-sung Shakespearean”, while as Iago, Toby Jones exudes a gleeful nastiness.

Jones is convincing in the role of the Machiavellian schemer, said Alice Saville in The Independent, but he doesn’t “channel the inner darkness you’d expect from this destructive force”. Here, the villain has “all the looming menace of a peevish middle manager”. At one point, when he makes a racist joke about Harewood’s “statesmanlike Othello”, it prompts uneasy laughter from the audience. They’re not sure who they should be rooting for. The staging does “grow into its horror”, and build into a “deeply nasty tale of murder and manipulation”, but while Morris is good on the physical violence – the audience “winces” when we hear a “spine snap, sharp as celery” – he is less so on the psychological violence.

It’s when the women are foregrounded, in the second half, that the production “finds its focus”, said Dominic Maxwell in The Sunday Times. The American actress Caitlin FitzGerald is terrific as Desdemona. By “bridging classical and contemporary sensibilities”, she “helps you to buy into” the character’s inner life, and thus the “awfulness of her murder”; and Vinette Robinson is stunning as Emilia, her maid and Iago’s wife. By “finding more life in the story’s victims than in the insanely articulate men who talk themselves into unspeakable acts against them”, the production “ends so much stronger than it started”.

Theatre Royal Haymarket, London SW1. Until 17 January

“If you want to experience contemporary opera at its most compelling, harrowing and intensely delivered”, said Richard Morrison in The Times, go and see English National Opera’s “stunning” new production of Jake Heggie’s “Dead Man Walking”. First staged in the US in 2000, and based on Sister Helen Prejean’s 1993 memoir about her work with prisoners on death row in Louisiana, the opera focuses on a composite character, a murderer and rapist known here as Joseph De Rocher, from his brutal crime to his execution by lethal injection. Plainly, this is not the “cheeriest way to spend three hours”. But opera proves the “perfect vehicle for a drama that deals with the very essence of morality, judgement and conscience”.

This true story was turned into a powerful, Oscar-winning film in 1995. With a libretto by Terrence McNally, the opera “packs an even bigger emotional punch”, said Ivan Hewett in The Daily Telegraph. In this version, we witness the crime itself – the murder of a young couple as they are making love in their car late one night. Staged in lurid half-lighting, it is “the most shocking spectacle I’ve ever seen on the operatic stage”. But it serves an important dramatic purpose, making us withhold sympathy from the condemned prisoner, and question Sister Helen’s wisdom. The result is a rich work full of “moral ambiguities”, and ENO’s staging, by director Annilese Miskimmon, is a “triumph”.

From the “undulating, surging” overture onwards, Heggie demonstrates a “confident control of dramatic momentum”, said David Jays in The London Standard. He uses Southern gospel alongside “conventional hymnody and lushly orchestrated passages that wouldn’t be out of place in a 1950s Hollywood melodrama”. It’s a “masterly score”, said Clive Paget in The Guardian – propulsive and supportive by turns – faultlessly played by the ENO Orchestra under Kerem Hasan. The singing, too, is first-rate. Christine Rice “brings huge emotional reserves” to the part of Sister Helen, and sings with unforced refinement. Michael Mayes conveys power and pathos as De Rocher, see-sawing between rage and despair.

London Coliseum, WC2 until 18 November

Ella Hickson’s “rollicking” adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s tale is “lavish family entertainment”, said Nick Curtis in London’s The Standard. As well as capturing the “adventure and enchantment” of the original, the playwright delves into its “psychological depths”.

In this “fascinating, feminist riff on a classic”, Wendy (Hannah Saxby) is “suspicious” when she spots Peter Pan (Daniel Krikler) “lurking outside her bedroom”, said Alice Saville in The Independent. And when he whisks her away to Neverland “she’s not enchanted – she’s enlisted into a life she didn’t ask for, forced to mother and feed its lost boys”.

Instead of being painted as an “escape from the real world”, Neverland becomes a “dark echo of it”. Hickson isn’t afraid to kill off characters and at times the production feels “more suited to misty-eyed adults than actual kids”. Still, it’s an “intelligent, contemporary” take on the story.

The production is most “confident” when it enters “classic ‘Peter Pan’ territory of swashbuckling swordfights and dastardly pirates”. Toby Stephens is “delightfully jovial” as Wendy’s father, Mr Darling, and brings all the “cut-glass accented camp villainy you could hope for” to the role of Captain Hook.

Colin Richmond’s set designs are the “brightest stars of the show”, said Julia Rank in London Theatre. And the choreography provides a “constant whirl of activity and adventure” complete with “spectacular flying sequences”.

Adults are given “plenty to mull over”, said Clive Davis in The Times, but I’m not sure Jonathan Munby’s production will “win over every child”. While it delivers some “handsome spectacle”, Hickson throws in “too many tweaks and distractions” and it “advances at a fitful pace” .

Still, the “heavy” plot changes are handled “lightly”, said Curtis in The Standard. And the thrilling aerial and combat scenes are beautifully put together. “On balance, magic.”

Until 22 November at The Barbican, londontheatredirect.com

“It’s a bold move to reactivate Stratford’s The Other Place as a regular performance space with ‘Macbeth’,” said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. “This, after all, was the scene of Trevor Nunn’s landmark 1976 production starring Ian McKellen and Judi Dench.”

Daniel Raggett’s new modern-day staging – set in a boozer in gangland Glasgow – is not in that league, but it “seizes every opportunity to achieve a sense of infernal intimacy”, often plunging the auditorium into darkness, and creating the atmosphere of “a nightmare lock-in”. The witches are a disturbingly ordinary trio of pub gossips. Duncan is a brutal “old capo” who has had the Thane of Cawdor executed; while Macbeth and his peers are thugs fighting to take over his turf. It’s a brutal production, blessed by a fine central performance by Sam Heughan, making his RSC debut.

Heughan “achieves full tragic weight, especially in the soliloquies”, said Mark Lawson in The Guardian. “Tomorrow and tomorrow” is brilliantly – and shockingly – staged as a kind of grisly slow dance with a dead character. As Lady Macbeth, Lia Williams is a revelation. She makes the verse “vernacular”, and some lines as “modern as the Pinter” at which she has previously excelled. The text adapts “enjoyably well to a drinking den” setting, and the production is “genuinely scary”.

It’s certainly not for the fainthearted, said Michael Davies on WhatsOnStage: some moments are over the top nasty. As for the concept, it works well in some respects. The rivalries and shifting powers between thanes transfer effectively to gangland Glasgow; but it also has fatal flaws. Shakespeare’s Duncan is a “most sainted king”, yet here he is a hardman with no “virtues” to be mourned. Macbeth is a valiant warrior undone by his inadequacies – but in this telling he leads Macduff’s son off stage carrying a hammer, to “dispatch the lethal blow himself”. Thus a “mighty tragedy” is reduced to a “seedy bar brawl for control over a bunch of thugs for whom it is impossible to feel any empathy”.

The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon. Until 6 December

In February 1974, Patty Hearst, the 19-year-old granddaughter of the newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, was abducted in California by a band of left-wing guerrillas calling themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army, said Clive Davis in The Times. They demanded huge ransoms – but also released recordings of Hearst saying that she’d joined their cause. She was then spotted taking part in a bank robbery, leading to her arrest in September 1975.

Her case caused a sensation, and posed a question that divided America: had she actually become a terrorist, or had she (as she testified in court) been raped and coerced by her captors? These events, and this question, provide the inspiration for this sharp and intriguing new play by English playwright Katherine Moar.

It’s a “riveting” memory play that traces the fallout from the case through a fictional meeting decades later between Patty Hearst, known here as Holly (Abigail Cruttenden), and Robert (Nathaniel Parker), the odious lawyer who lost her case, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. Having prospered in the intervening years, he is now facing sexual misconduct allegations in the #MeToo era that could ruin him, and hopes Holly – back in high society – will speak up for him. The irony of this reversal is not lost on her: he had not sympathised with her back then, and her sexual assault allegations were not believed. “How things change,” she says. “Forty years ago, it was sex. Now it’s rape.” The play “does not quite know how to finish” but the dialogue is “so deft and sparkling, you could listen on and on”.

I would have liked Moar to have spent more time examining why Holly joined her captors, said Aleks Sierz on The Arts Desk. We hear Robert’s dismissive “Velcro theory” – she was just a privileged young woman who got stuck to the first ideology she ran into – yet other ones are “barely hinted at”. Still, the play is very good at showing how the pair’s younger selves (who appear in flashback, played by different actors) “are strangers to their older sense of themselves”. Briskly directed, and written with “great theatrical confidence”, it adds up to a “compelling” exploration of the legacy of a grim decade.
Jermyn Street Theatre, London SW1. Until 15 November.

“Why is this RSC reinvention of Edmond Rostand’s much-revived 1897 play so unusually enchanting,” asked Dominic Maxwell in The Times. Is it Adrian Lester, never better, as the large-nosed, “gilet-sporting, verse-spouting” soldier of the title, “handy in a duel, even handier with a turn of phrase”? Is it Susannah Fielding as his “ideal woman”, Roxane? Is it Simon Evans and the poet Debris Stevenson’s lively modern-language translation? Is it the humour, “which nestles this tragicomedy even at its saddest”? The truth is that nearly everything in Evans’ “huge-hearted production” is perfectly calibrated. Even the famous nose is nicely done: big enough for you to see why Cyrano, beneath the bravado, is deeply insecure – “but not so big that you spend time wondering how it stays on”.

Lester is the highlight of the show, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. As Cyrano, channelling his love for Roxane through the handsome but tongue-tied young soldier Christian (Levi Brown), writing his love letters and feeding him lines, Lester gives this production its “sublimely wounded soul”. The staging is “nifty”, too, bringing the romance and violence of France’s 17th-century golden age to life.

“Playful, poignant, profound, perfectly pitched” – Cyrano himself would have “a field day” finding words to describe this “glorious” production, said Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times. It “tumbles across the stage, filling the RSC’s Swan Theatre with life”. It is “just wonderful”.

I found the production a little tricksy, said Dominic Cavendish in The Telegraph. “Each character has their own speaking style: whether that be monosyllabic Christian, Roxane breaking lines as her thoughts fly, or Cyrano’s rhymes shifting to map his mood.” But the big set-pieces work beautifully, notably the famous balcony scene, in which Cyrano first whispers advice to Christian, and then woos Roxane himself, from the shadows. “It’s not perfect. But, played confidently across the board, and bolstered to the hilt by Lester’s presence, it’s another RSC must-see.”

In 1972, “The Harder They Come” brought reggae to the world and catapulted Jimmy Cliff – who starred in the film and wrote and performed several of the songs on its soundtrack – to international fame, said Sonny Waheed on What’s on Stage. This glorious adaptation, by Suzan-Lori Parks, honours that cinematic landmark while standing in its own right as a “vibrant, moving and ultimately triumphant piece of musical theatre”.

Set in Jamaica, it tells the story of singer-songwriter Ivan, a “country boy” who arrives in Kingston with the dream of making it as a recording artist, only to encounter corruption and slide into a life of crime. But where the film was a gritty drama, featuring scenes of intense violence, Parks has created for the stage something “altogether more uplifting”. Matthew Xia’s staging “crackles with visceral energy”, while the choreography, by Shelley Maxwell, “gives everything a natural rhythm that permeates” the evening “like a collective heartbeat”.

It’s hard to go far wrong when you are drawing on such uplifting reggae classics as “You Can Get it if You Really Want”, “Israelites”, and “I Can See Clearly Now”, said Anya Ryan in Time Out. But credit to the cast for making sure that the score “roars, cracks and prickles”. As Ivan, Natey Jones is superb, and matching him in both singing and acting chops is Madeline Charlemagne as the devout Elsa, said Gary Naylor on The Arts Desk. The singing across the board is astonishing, though, and never more so than in a bravura “Many Rivers to Cross”. Led by Josie Benson as Ivan’s mother, it “expands to an ensemble work that is operatic in its scale and power”. It is “spine- tingling” – and that is not a “metaphorical flourish, but a literal description”.

“There are only aces in this deck,” said Chris Wiegand in The Guardian. The cast are “uniformly excellent”, set and costume design are impressive – with a “sharp eye for unadorned spiritual and natty secular stylings” – and the eight-piece band is as precise as the stunning choreography. It makes for an irresistible and spectacular show.

Theatre Royal Stratford East, London E15. Until 1 November, stratfordeast.com.

Anthony Lau’s “searing and starkly stripped-back” new staging of “Lord of the Flies” brings William Golding’s modern classic to “thrilling life”, said Gareth Carr on WhatsOnStage.

The tale about a group of boys stranded on a desert island after a plane crash has been a staple of the school curriculum for decades. But it’s a story that remains “timely, disturbing and brilliantly insightful”.

It’s hard to remember a time when the Chichester Festival Theatre stage has been as “abrasively treated as it is in Georgia Lowe’s brutally sparse but incredibly effective designs”. Illuminated by the “harsh fluorescence" of Matt Daw’s lighting, the “unforgiving wasteland” is a fitting backdrop as Golding’s characters “disintegrate into animalistic savages”.

Lau’s “spare and powerful” revival of Nigel Williams’ adaptation encourages us to “reflect afresh upon how quickly the everyday can take a plunge into the darkness”, said Fiona Mountford in The Telegraph. The bare stage is supported by a “wonderfully ominous surround-sound design” from Giles Thomas. “If there are moments when it is not entirely clear what is happening, the momentum of this rapidly unfolding dystopia is unmistakeable.”

From smoke and flashing lights to “litres of stage gore”, it’s a “hyper-busy” production, said Mark Lawson in The Guardian. The entire interval is needed to “wipe down” the stage before the second half. “But rather than cutting to the emotional core of the story”, said Dave Fargnoli in The Stage, “all this abstraction has a distancing effect, and the overall result feels messy”.

There are some jarring inconsistencies, said Carr on WhatsOnStage. It feels “odd”, for example, that a “handy electric cordless drill” appears as a torture instrument when the boys “are only just about able to light a fire”.

But the production is anchored by an “extraordinary” cast. Sheyi Cole is “quietly commanding as the natural-born leader Ralph”, while Alfie Jallow is “equally engaging” as Piggy, injecting the “well-meaning conscience of the group” with a “poignant light-heartedness”. In all, it’s an “uncompromising and fearless” staging that confirms Golding’s landmark work of literature is still as “unpleasantly relevant” today.

Until 11 October at Chichester Festival Theatre, cft.org.uk

“Some plays are perfectly formed but perhaps a little dull,” said Sarah Crompton on WhatsOnStage. “Some meander but are utterly compelling.”

Ibsen’s “The Lady from the Sea” (1888) – about a young wife caught between safe domesticity and an old lover, a sailor who returns to her port town – probably fits in that latter category; and Simon Stone’s “after Ibsen” adaptation certainly does.

Stone has a reputation for “visceral and gripping” updates of classic dramas (“Yerma”, “Phaedra”). For this “thrillingly contemporary shake-up”, he has swapped 19th-century Norway for a modern home by Lake Windermere, and gathered a “luminous” cast, led by Alicia Vikander and Andrew Lincoln. The result is “hugely enjoyable”; and if it “isn’t quite as revealing as the best of Stone’s work, it’s only because he has set himself a very high bar”.

Lincoln is terrific as the husband, said Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times – and Vikander is “magnetic as Ellida, combining a lithe, bright physical presence with a quiet sense of deeply buried torment. Their climactic showdown is gripping.”

The staging is good too, “full of skill and ingenuity”, said Dominic Maxwell in The Times. But the adaptation “drowns out Ibsen’s alluring strangeness as much as it makes it resonate”. And while the rain that pours onto the long, traverse set adds intensity in the second half, a brooding love scene between Vikander and Brendan Cowell, as her returned eco-warrior lover, is “slow, soggy and silly”.

I found the whole thing a bit of a damp squib, said Alice Saville in The Independent. In “laboriously engineering” a plausible modern setting for Ibsen’s story, Stone has lost sight of what the play is actually about. Ellida’s “pivotal” choice between “bourgeois comfort and the elemental, sexual lure of the sea” could feel current, but somehow ends up as an afterthought – which is doubly odd, given the “vast amounts of water” that drenches the cast.

Once the “ridiculous symbolic weather front” swamps the stage, it’s hard to really focus on the drama, said Robert Gore-Langton in The Mail on Sunday. It’s a “classic case of rain stops play”.

Bridge Theatre, London SE1. Until 8 November

Opera lovers arriving at Covent Garden this week for the start of the new season were greeted by Ukrainian flags and scores of picketing protesters. “While she sings, Ukraine bleeds,” read the placards, while megaphoned messages were yet angrier. “There’s blood all over the floor of the Royal Opera House tonight,” said one.

No, the controversial casting of the great Russian soprano Anna Netrebko – who was previously banned by houses across Europe owing to her historical support for Vladimir Putin’s regime – in the Royal Opera’s new production of “Tosca” did not pass without a fuss, said Richard Morrison in The Times.

Netrebko has publicly denounced her country’s invasion of Ukraine, but her critics want her to speak out against Putin too. The Metropolitan Opera in New York continues to ban her (she is suing them), but she will be singing in several European capitals this winter – and more protests are likely. None of this appears to faze her, however. “At 53, she still portrays Tosca, the volatile opera singer who gets tangled up in the politics of a repressive regime, with white-hot passion and a matchless range of vocal and visual nuance.”

I detected nerves to start, said Barry Millington in The London Standard; but these had settled by the time Netrebko had to deliver her big Act II aria, “Vissi d’arte” – “exploiting her rich, darkly expressive lower range and her glorious top alike, holding the beautifully floated final notes for an eternity”. And the audience was thunderous in its approval.

Set in a “chilling” dictatorship, Oliver Mears’s terrific staging is also blessed with a “mettlesome Cavaradossi of baritonal heft” in Freddie De Tommaso, said Richard Fairman in the Financial Times. Gerald Finley brilliantly conveys Scarpia’s “slimy depravity”. And holding it all together from the pit, with tremendous confidence, is Covent Garden’s new music director Jakub Hruša, said Flora Willson in The Guardian. He makes space for “moments of beauty”, but mines from the “darkest, grittiest passages of Puccini’s score a performance of tremendous emotional force”.

Royal Opera House, London WC2. Until 7 October, rbo.org.uk

“It’s theatre, not a history lesson,” says Will Shakespeare early on in Liz Duffy Adams’s “firecracker” of a new play. This line, said Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times, serves as a warning to the audience that they should “take everything” here “with a pinch of salt”.

Steamy, “mischievously provocative”, and “peppered with literary gags”, “Born With Teeth” imagines the relationship between Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe as they collaborate on the “Henry VI” plays. It’s highly entertaining, and sensationally acted: Edward Bluemel makes a convincingly gauche but steely Will, the young man from the sticks, while Ncuti Gatwa (“Doctor Who”) is superb as Kit – a “hypnotic presence twirling a ridiculously camp quill”. But what holds the play back is its failure “to dive deeper into the huge themes” it raises, which include religious and artistic freedom in a repressive era.

Gatwa’s fans will surely relish this “sprightly” production, said Clive Davis in The Times – although his Marlowe, all extravagant gestures and wicked glances, is very like “the OTT version of Algernon that he gave us in the National’s recent, panto-like revival of ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’”. Others may be more sceptical about what is essentially “an ingenious revue sketch stretched to outsize proportions”. But while the script is rich in literary references, when compared with, say, the TV comedy “Upstart Crow”, there is “more artful wittering here than actual wit”, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph.

We get some sense of the complex times in which these men live. Adams suggests that Marlowe’s insouciance and his insecurity relate to his “espionage-related connections in high places”; and both men are under pressure to “spill inculpating secrets about each other” – Marlowe’s inferred atheism and the Catholic leanings of Shakespeare’s parents.

All this should “matter”, yet we’re left with a feeling of “So what?”. The evening is “really not terrible”, said Dominic Maxwell in The Sunday Times; but I could not see the point of it. “Bluemel is great. Gatwa has his moments. Some lines land. What can I say? I’d rather have done my taxes.”

Wyndham’s Theatre, London WC2. Until 1 November

This adaptation of Ilya Kaminsky’s poetry collection is “every bit as urgent, humane and moving as the book that inspired it”, said Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times.

Dublin-based theatre company Dead Centre has joined forces with the sign language poet Zoë McWhinney to “deftly” bring the Ukrainian-American writer’s work to the stage. In a “smartly mischievous” opening, deaf actor Romel Belcher introduces Caoimhe Coburn Gray as his interpreter to help make the show “accessible” for hearing audiences.

Set in Vasenka, a fictional occupied city, the narrative stems from a tragic wartime atrocity: a deaf boy is shot and killed by a soldier for failing to follow a command that he couldn’t hear while watching a puppet show. In an act of solidarity, the entire town turns deaf overnight. The sign language peppered throughout Kaminsky’s original collection “takes on living form as an ensemble of deaf and hearing actors” in this “richly textured” production, slipping between British Sign Language, surtitles and spoken dialogue.

It’s a “wondrous two hours of storytelling that renders the Russian invasion of Ukraine both enchantingly strange and newly shocking”, said Claire Allfree in The Telegraph. The “stylistically thrilling” production weaves together a “feast of theatrical techniques” from acrobatics to live cinema.

Describing something as a “waking nightmare” would usually be a “straightforwardly bad thing”, said Alice Saville in The Independent. But there isn’t anything straightforward about this “unsettling, enthralling” show. An “experimental epic of war and resistance”, it’s a production that will make you “rub your eyes and reach desperately for something real to hold on to”.

“Is it possible, though, to create a fully engaging narrative out of poems that are so full of ambiguity and ambivalence?” said Clive Davis in The Times. There are moments when the production has “more of the static quality of an art installation” than theatre, and it could shave 20 minutes off its running time. The “highly stylised” effects can also start to feel “gimmicky”, said Theo Bosanquet on WhatsOnStage, and the play “struggles to tie its disparate ideas together”.

Overall, though, it’s a powerful piece of theatre that is both “playful” and “provocative”, said Hemming. “The audience, sitting there in silence, can be seen as part of the resistance. But lack of action can also be seen as a failing.”

Until 13 September at Royal Court Theatre, London; then 2-5 October at Samuel Beckett Theatre, Dublin

If you seek the "fashionable Elizabethan melancholy" that has dominated so many productions of "Twelfth Night", you should "pack up your lyre and go elsewhere", said Rachel Halliburton in The Times. Robin Belfield's "carnivalesque" new staging of Shakespeare's "tale of mistaken identities and thwarted desires" at the Globe is a "riotous celebration of life".

Belfield emphasises the farcical elements and the themes of gender and sexual fluidity, said Dzifa Benson in The Daily Telegraph – while Jean Chan's design adds to the mood of "licensed disorder", with a gleeful mishmash of eras and styles. With strong acting and a vibrant comic energy, it makes for a late-summer "jamboree" that's "joyfully tongue-in-cheek".

"The production is studded with lovely performances," said Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times. Ronke Adékoluejó makes a "keenly intelligent and vividly impulsive" Viola; Laura Hanna impresses as Olivia; and Pearce Quigley's Malvolio is "extremely droll". But what's almost entirely missing are the "nuanced depths" of the best versions of "Twelfth Night".

Subtlety is hard to convey in the wide open spaces of the Globe's yard, but this production "barely bothers with it at all", said Alun Hood on WhatsOnStage. It seems many of the actors have been directed to "mug, sashay and bawl their way through the play to such an extent that the characters feel less like real people than random assemblages of funny walks, facial tics and line deliveries ranging from flat to shrill". At times, the results are very funny – but the "poetry and exquisite melancholy of Shakespeare's text go for almost nothing".

Certainly, this staging is "extremely knockabout, steering away from the play's anguished layers", said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. The pangs of unrequited desire – the very heart of "Twelfth Night" – are never quite felt, and the angst of the central romances is "swallowed up by laughter and lightness". In some cases, too, the verse is "dampened by unremarkable delivery". For all that, though, this production has "oodles of charm and midsummer madness". "Make of it what you will, I suppose."

Globe Theatre, London SE1. Until 25 October, shakespearesglobe.com

Over his brilliant three-decade career, Ralph Fiennes has "proven himself to be a Shakespearean actor with gravitas", said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. Now, he's turned his hand to directing one of the Bard's greatest comedies, "As You Like It".

Fiennes isn't known for his "comic chops" and he brings a "depth to this pastoral" that "dares to venture into sombreness". It's clear he wants to avoid rushing through the text, and instead he draws emotion from scenes that are often "swallowed up in faster-paced productions".

The humour is "subdued" in the opening scenes, said Holly O'Mahony in The Stage, as is the stripped-back set. But the mood soon starts to "lighten" and the projected Forest of Arden comes into "vibrant green bloom" as Rosalind (Gloria Obianyo), disguised as Ganymede, "gets cracking on her plan" to tutor lovesick Orlando (Charlie Rowe) in the art of wooing.

Obianyo's "wit glitters" as Rosalind, and she delivers her lines "as though plucked fresh from the forge", said Kris Hallett in WhatsOnStage. But it is Amber James, as Celia, who "lingers most vividly in the memory". Her character, too often overshadowed by Rosalind, dazzles in her own right here with a "performance so alive, one longs for Shakespeare to have penned her another play". Fiennes directs with a "light hand, more gardener than architect, clearing space for his actors to flower".

Harriet Walter is "splendidly wistful and sardonic as the melancholy Jacques", delivering the Seven Ages of Man speech while casually taking bites of an apple, said Dominic Cavendish in The Telegraph. But the production itself, while "fitfully captivating", could do with lightening up.

Fiennes' production could certainly "afford to be more kittenish in places", said Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times. Still, he brings "wisdom and depth" to Shakespeare's beloved comedy, and it's a "lovely, delicate staging", brimming with "deft" performances.

At Theatre Royal Bath until 6 September; theatreroyal.org.uk

Scottish Ballet has "scored a hit" with its new "Mary, Queen of Scots", which premiered this week at the Edinburgh International Festival, said Donald Hutera in The Times. Choreographer Sophie Laplane and director James Bonas have created an "audaciously bold, assured and sometimes downright wacky" take on Scotland's doomed monarch – filtering Mary's story through the imagined memories of her cousin, rival and nemesis, Queen Elizabeth I.

The storytelling is "episodic yet fleet", and the production is stylish and handsome – with both a "quirky sense of humour" and "emotional gravitas". A warning: the dense first act might challenge anyone who's not clear on the history. But the pay-off comes in the second act, as this "fizzing" ballet expands and deepens into "that rare thing: a work I felt I would gladly revisit even as I was watching it".

Imagine if, just before bedtime, you were to "read a 'Horrible Histories' on the Tudors, leaf through a Vivienne Westwood catalogue and then wolf down an indecently large slab of roquefort". The resulting dream, said Mark Monahan in The Daily Telegraph, might capture the spirit of this eccentric but "richly theatrical" and impressive new work. The first act is too long, but "there's a great deal to enjoy here for dance tyros and devotees alike" – notably the two queens' "nightmarish pas de deux", performed on a podium, while blood cascades down the set's "perfect white walls".

Laplane's choreography shows an eclectic range of influences, said Lucy Ribchester in The Scotsman. There's "graceful courtly posturing, flat-footed earthy cèilidhs and even glimpses of tango in a sultry duet" between Mary and Darnley, her husband. Similarly, the score (by Mikael Karlsson and Michael P. Atkinson) draws variously on electro-acoustic, Scottish melodies, Elizabethan jigs and "pure musical drama". All the dancers impress, but Charlotta Öfverholm, as the older Elizabeth, most of all. She brings a "wisdom and vulnerability to her movement that is endlessly compelling to watch".

Scottish Ballet, touring Scotland 17 September to 18 October, scottishballet.co.uk

If you're a fan of the 1977 movie "Grease" (and who isn't?) and a lover of adventurous theatre, "you'll be hopelessly devoted" to the latest extravaganza from Secret Cinema, said Nick Curtis in London's The Standard.

For its adaptation, the immersive cinema/theatre company has transformed a huge shed in Battersea Park into Grease's Rydell High School. Inside, a central stage is ringed by ten vast video screens, and platforms where set pieces are recreated by the cast and crew: an auto shop for "Greased Lightnin'", a salon for "Beauty School Dropout", and so on.

Outside, there's a recreation of the funfair where Danny and Sandy finally get together, complete with food and drinks stalls. "The atmosphere is part festival, part hen-do", and the whole thing is a "masterpiece of coordination" by director Matt Costain. I had thought that there was no way this very familiar musical "could re-engage or surprise me. But it seems 'Grease' is the word. Again."

Secret Cinema events typically involve the audience roaming freely through an immersive experience, followed by a film screening, said Anna James on What's On Stage. Here, the film happens throughout the night, with pauses and cuts, and runs concurrently with live action – making the event an "elaborate" hybrid that works beautifully, not least because it is so confidently delivered by the "phenomenal" cast.

All the songs are performed live with a band, and feature stunning choreography. The set-up is more "static" than usual, said Tom Wicker in The Stage – there are fewer chances to wander round and get lost than in previous such events. And having the live cast play certain scenes alongside the film feels a bit "disjointed" at times. But when it comes to the big numbers, "the wow factor is there".

The dance-off in the gym builds "masterfully to a breathless crescendo"; "Greased Lightnin'" is indeed electrifying; and we truly do "go together" for the reprise of "You're the One That I Want": it becomes a "gloriously communal" experience as it opens up into the exterior fairground. "The buzz of that number alone will make you relish the last of these summer nights."

Battersea Park, London SW11. Until 7 Sept

Alan Davies has returned to stand-up for the first time in 10 years with a new show that "ventures into edgier, darker territory than those familiar with his affable screen persona will expect", said Dominic Cavendish in The Telegraph.

Having spoken for the first time, in his 2020 memoir "Just Ignore Him", about the childhood sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of his late father, the "QI" panellist is now "finally, bravely broaching the subject" at the Edinburgh Fringe, before taking the show on tour.

"A barrel-load of laughs? At points: no." But Davies delves into a "sensitive, under-discussed issue" in a way that makes you admire his ongoing ability to see "the funny side of life" while coping with his "lasting trauma".

Davies opens up on this painful subject "rawly" and with a "lightness of touch", said Brian Logan in The Guardian. At one point, he directly addresses his "laboured breathing", informing the audience that he still suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder when recounting his early memories. It's a "compelling stage moment".

The show goes far beyond Davies' abuse, and the rest of the night delivers "one big-laughs set-piece after another", spanning everything from his "experience of delivering a poo sample for a cancer screening" to erectile dysfunction and fatherhood.

Davies has a "chortling ease" that you only find in the most "gifted" comics, said Dominic Maxwell in The Times. But the show feels like a "cake he hasn't quite finished baking"; the "gear change is still grinding" between the "jaded yet fond" stories of his present life and the distressing recollections of life with his father. "It's always enjoyable, sometimes brave, a great show in the making, but for now, understandably, a work in progress."

The material was certainly "darker" than expected and I'm sure the show will undergo "further fine-tuning", said Scottish Field. Still, it's an "excellent" return to stand-up and Davies delivers lots of "big belly laughs" throughout. "A must watch at the Fringe this year."

Until 10 August at the Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh, then touring from 19 September–21 November; ticketmaster.co.uk

Suzie Miller is the Australian lawyer-turned-playwright whose one-woman play "Prima Facie" – about the failings of the criminal justice system, and featuring a "tour de force" performance from Jodie Comer – was a massive hit in London and New York, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph.

Miller's follow-up, "Inter Alia", has similar themes, but whereas the earlier work was about a top-flight defence barrister who experiences the legal system from the other side after she is sexually assaulted, "Inter Alia" is about a high-powered feminist judge, Jessica, whose 18-year-old son Harry is accused of rape. It's a gripping and gut-wrenching piece, even if it feels a bit "sketchier" and more didactic than its predecessor.

This is a "banger" of a play that sent a chill down my spine, said Robert Gore-Langton in The Mail on Sunday. Rosamund Pike, in her first theatrical role for 15 years, is "electric" as the judge. On stage throughout, she "communicates courage, comedy, principled conviction and a tsunami of middle-class angst".

The first scenes show Jessica juggling her life as a judge with motherhood and a busy social life. All this showcases Pike's range, said Andrzej Lukowski in Time Out, but it is when the rape storyline emerges that the drama really gets going. Miller is interested in why rape convictions are so rare, and to that end, she makes Harry quite sympathetic. Jessica, protective of her son but keen to stand by her principles, clings to the hope that, owing to their different understanding of the incident, he and the girl in question are both "right". It does at times feel like a lecture more than a drama – but blessed with a sophisticated staging and a "gale force" central turn, it "hits home, thoughtfully and forcefully".

Director Justin Martin, who also directed "Prima Facie", "ensures that the tempo never falters", said Clive Davis in The Times. The fluid set design brings a "rare sense of intimacy to the Lyttelton's stage", and Pike is superb. But ultimately, Miller's tale is rather "slender", and "you can see where the story is heading long before the final scene".

Lyttelton, National Theatre, London SE1. Until 13 September

Damian Cruden's superb production of "The Railway Children" – featuring a real steam train – premiered in York in 2008, then thrilled audiences in London and Toronto too, said Patrick Kidd in The Times.

This joyous revival, which forms part of Bradford's year as UK City of Culture, takes the novelty a step further, by including the actual railway used in the much-loved 1970 film adaptation of E. Nesbit's book. Audiences board a steam train at Keighley, for a half-hour trip along the lovingly preserved Keighley & Worth Valley line. This takes them through Oakworth, which served as the film's main location, and on to Oxenhope, where the "immersive" drama plays out in a reconfigured engine shed. The spectacular train ride conjures up a "nostalgic and benevolent mood", but it is "only the beginning of a magical performance" centred on the 100-tonne locomotive, built in 1887, that was used in the film.

"This is a glorious piece of storytelling, spirited, sentimental and spectacular," said Ron Simpson on What's on Stage. Mike Kenny's adaptation is "masterly", and Cruden's deployment of his large cast, often as passengers and anonymous bystanders, is "magnificent". The actors playing the children – Roberta, Peter and Phyllis – are individually excellent and "operate perfectly as a trio", but everyone, from housemaids up, makes their mark. And the whole thing is beautifully stitched together, from Joanna Scotcher's set and costume designs to Christopher Madin's evocative music. It's a glorious production and a "wholesome triumph", said The Times in an editorial. "Toot! Toot!"

The design is "stupendous" and the drama "deftly executed", said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. But I found the storytelling a bit tame initially, and the emotional temperature somewhat tepid. In what could have been an interesting twist, this production makes the siblings Anglo-Indian – but sadly this change feels "cosmetic", not really thought through. Thankfully, after the interval, the drama gets "back on track", with more humour and narrative verve. By the close, with Father's emotional return, the production "has become irresistible".

"Even the most hardcore Bardolator" would concede that "The Merry Wives of Windsor" is not one of Shakespeare's better works, said Andrzej Lukowski in Time Out. It's a daft, flawed, and "canonically illogical" spin-off from the Henry IV plays that gives the beloved character of Sir John Falstaff a brand new comic adventure – wooing the wealthy wives of Windsor in the hope of making some money.

The play lacks the "pathos and grit of his original appearances", and sidesteps the fact that Falstaff died 200 years before the manifestly "present-day" action. Rather than try and "fix" any of this, Sean Holmes' entertaining new staging leans strongly into the daftness, with a "relentless barrage of absurdist line deliveries and outlandish character interpretations". It's "pathologically silly", but so long as you're not expecting too much, "you'll have fun".

You certainly will, said Nick Curtis in London's The Standard. A crack cast of comic actors makes this production a "treat". Falstaff is played by George Fouracres, a Black Country comedian-turned-actor who has "brought revelatory zest to several Shakespearean clowns at the Globe in recent years".

He's terrific, working the audience with wit and charm. Katherine Pearce's saucy Mistress Ford and Emma Pallant's beady Mistress Page have the "fine timing and physical ease of a practised double-act as they dupe and then punish Falstaff for his impudence". Sophie Russell as pragmatic fixer Mistress Quickly and Samuel Creasey as the effete Welsh priest, Hugh Evans, also win big laughs.

It makes for a "jolly" evening, said Clive Davis in The Times. I found myself wishing I was in the pit with the "groundlings", to soak up the atmosphere.

It's all "entertainingly" done, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. But overall, this theatrical cake fails to rise. Fouracres is a far younger and more sprightly Falstaff than the "plus-sized buffoon" that the plot and jokes require.

And he "doesn't fully dominate proceedings as you'd hope; the supporting cast often garner the belly-laughs". This is an enjoyable show that's "suitable for tourists", but it "falls short of being a summer sensation for all".

Globe Theatre, London SE1. Until 20 September

"There's nothing quite like the Edinburgh Fringe Festival," said Andrzej Lukowski in Time Out. With more than 3,000 shows to choose from, spanning everything from comedy to cabaret, "flicking through the phonebook-like Fringe programme can be more than a little daunting".

The giant arts festival is returning to the Scottish capital from 1-25 August 2025, so it's time to start planning your trip. Here are some of the best shows to look out for.

Desiree Burch: The Golden Wrath

"Always compelling and thoughtful", American comedian Desiree Burch is returning to stand-up for her first show in six years, said Brian Logan in The Guardian. In that time she's become a "fixture of small-screen comedy", appearing in everything from "Mock the Week" to "Live at the Apollo". Burch returns to the Edinburgh Fringe with a "madcap voyage through midlife crisis and menopause". edfringe.com

Joe Kent-Walters is Frankie Monroe: DEAD!!! (Good Fun Time)

Yorkshire-born stand-up Joe Kent-Walters "deservedly" scooped the Fringe's best newcomer award last year for his "batshit debut" as Frankie Monroe, the ghoulish owner and MC of a fictional working men's club in Rotherham, said Lukowski in Time Out. After being "rightfully sucked into hell" at the end of his last show, Kent-Walters returns with his "pleasingly named" sequel, to haunt the audience from beyond the grave. edfringe.com

Lorna Rose Treen: 24 Hour Diner People

The award-winning character comic marked herself out as an "eccentric new voice" with her "dotty" anthology "Skin Pigeon" back in 2023, said Logan in The Guardian. Now, she's back with another collection of "weird women", this time frequenting an all-night diner. "Expect silly. Expect very specific. Expect (for example) a trucker with unusually long arms and a woman who's kept her umbilical cord." edfringe.com

Urooj Ashfaq: How to Be a Baddie

Mumbai-based comedian Urooj Ashfaq "made a big impression" with her Fringe debut in 2023, her "deft, warm" reflections on having therapy securing that year's best newcomer award, said Lukowski in Time Out. In her new show, "How to Be a Baddie", the "wide-eyed" comic riffs off her "squeaky clean image", trying to convince us she's had a "personality overhaul" and is no longer a good girl. edfringe.com

Hot Mess

"We're incredibly excited about this one," said Alex Wood on WhatsOnStage. The creative duo behind "42 Balloons" have created a romantic comedy musical about a love affair between Earth and Humanity. With cracking casting – Danielle Steels of "Six" and Tobias Turley from "Mamma Mia" – and music from composer Jack Godfrey, it should be a lot of fun. edfringe.com

A Jaffa Cake Musical

This "hilarious" courtroom musical is about a "VERY serious" real-life case: "is it a cake or a biscuit?" said Theatre & Tonic. The show, by the "brilliant" Gigglemug, is filled with "catchy tunes and fantastic performances"; expect a "real treat to sink your teeth into". edfringe.com