This is Natasha Gordon’s first play, and in it she has created an entire world. A world of grief and laughter, conflict and closeness. A world that is very specifically located within Britain's Jamaican community, yet one whose themes of loss and belonging cross boundaries.

The Old Vic's revival of its successful Christmas Carol first seen this time last year had me at the mince pies: they were served before curtain up by a Bob Cratchit figure while we admired the shoal of Victorian lanterns lighting the way over a cross-shaped stage that cuts the audience into quarters. Top-hatted gentlemen and gentleladies in swishing black great coats strolled about tossing oranges.

What do you gain by casting Dr Faustus and Mephistopheles as women? In the programme for this often illuminating production, director Pauline Randall declares, “There’s always a rather intimidating, institutional question of ‘why’ when it comes to these decisions, and especially when it comes to handling a classical text. Sometimes the right refute is 'why not?', and we’re choosing to respond to that more productive challenge.”

Don't be deceived by Kit Harington's matted, slicked-back hair that is immediately visible the minute the audience enters the boisterous West End revival of True West. By the time the director Matthew Dunster's production has roared to a close two hours later, pretty much nothing is still intact, its leading man's locks included. That's as it should be with Sam Shepard's now-iconic 1980 play that I actually saw somewhat by chance during its world premiere engagement in San Francisco in 1980 and have returned to many times since. 

There’s a welcome alternative to panto hijinks in this gem of a Trevor Nunn musical revival – more attuned to the biting hardships of winter, and to the elegiac aspect of change, than to festive jollies. Which is not to say that there isn’t rousing fun to be had in many a slick set-piece, but this intimate, sensitive staging brings out the work’s soul, particularly its timeless call for empathy and compassion.

Actor Ellie Kendrick is a familiar face on television, but it's only as a writer that she reveals the depth of her rage against the world. At least, that's what it feels like. After starring in the BBC's The Diary of Anne Frank while still at school, she's gone on to act in Game of Thrones, Vanity Fair and Mike Bartlett's Press, a BBC series where she played the junior reporter on the Guardian-style daily paper.

Forget the cloak in the puddle. Never mind potatoes and tobacco. The children's book cliché of Sir Walter Raleigh (or Ralegh as he seems to have preferred in an age of changeable spelling) represents little of the real man and is at best misleading. The cloak incident was a later invention and potatoes and tobacco were already known before Ralegh's adventures in the New World. He did, however, popularise the smoking of tobacco at court.

In 2009 Sean Holmes, then Lyric Hammersmith's artistic director, made a bold move by reintroducing panto at the lovely Frank Matcham house after a long break. It was a box-office and critical hit, bringing in young audiences and celebrating the theatre's roots in the community while producing a quality but unstarry show. This year's offering, Dick Whittington, written by Jude Christian (who also directs) and Cariad Lloyd, remains true to the theatre's urban street style of storytelling.

This production of Tennessee Williams’ neglected classic, Summer and Smoke, arrives from the Almeida into the West End with five-star plaudits for its pitch-perfect performances and pressure-cooker intensity.

Getting the look right is half the battle: in that, Peter Groom's one-time-Captain Marlene Dietrich is a winner from the start. The looks at the audience nail it too, heavy-lidded and lashed but transfixing, charismatic, winning instant complicity. As with all the best one-(wo)man cabaret-style shows, though, this is no mere impersonation.