Time runs on different lines in Russian theatre to our own. The 83-year-old Galina Volchek co-founded Moscow's Sovremennik Theatre in 1956, and has been its artistic director for the past 45 years; Three Comrades has held its place in the Sovremennik repertoire since 1999. Search the British theatrical tradition for long-running shows and you may come up with one or two, like An Inspector Calls and The Mousetrap; but those have had regular cast changes.

I hate the kind of hype that sells out a new play within minutes of tickets becoming available. I mean, isn’t there something hideously lemming-like about this kind of stampede for a limited commodity? It almost makes me want to hate the show – before a word has been spoken on stage. On the other hand, there is also something delicious about the prospect of another Jez Butterworth play. After his triumphs with Jerusalem in 2009, and its follow-up The River in 2012, it’s fascinating to see what he does next. And, as a plus, this new one stars Paddy Considine.

James Shirley is a rarely performed 17th-century playwright whose oeuvre has generally been consigned to theatrical study and research. Written for King Charles I at a time of great political upheaval and with the English Civil War looming, not to mention the shutdown of London theatres, his 1641 play The Cardinal represents Shirley's self-confessed masterpiece.

Time travel, Britpop, Sleeping Beauty. Classical ballet, the ravages of alcoholism, serial poisoning. There’s plenty going on in Douglas Maxwell’s idiosyncratic Charlie Sonata at Edinburgh’s Lyceum Theatre – so much, in fact, that it’s hard to know what it all adds up to.

It’s a bigly Trump-fest over at the Donmar, with adaptor Bruce Norris determined to make Brecht great again – or at least pointedly contemporary.

After the first preview of Mike Leigh’s play Two Thousand Years at the National Theatre, a young Guardian reporter accosted an audience member for his view of the play. The audience member gave his name as Nigel Shapps, his age as 42, his background as Jewish, and his opinion that it was one of the most brilliant things he’d ever seen. Much to Leigh’s delight, he was quoted in the paper the next day.

Playwright Martin Crimp’s 1993 satirical epic, The Treatment, is a fabulous work, but it’s rarely revived. Although much of his back catalogue – especially Attempts on Her Life (1997) – has been revisited, The Treatment has often been ignored, perhaps on account of its large cast, or because of its large scale.

“Everything in extremity”. That announcement that the Capulet party is about to begin could just as well serve to describe Daniel Kramer’s Romeo and Juliet as a whole. Opening the Globe's new season, it will provoke reactions as conflicting as the play’s warring families.

Playwright Duncan Macmillan has had a good couple of years. In 2015, his play People, Places and Things was a big hit at the National Theatre, winning awards and transferring to the West End. His other plays, often produced by new-writing company Paines Plough, have been regular fixtures at the Edinburgh Festival, while his co-adaptation (with director Robert Icke) of George Orwell’s classic Nineteen Eighty-Four has been constantly revived in the West End.

There is a distinctive look, feel, even sound to a stage production directed by Ivo van Hove, which is becoming rather familiar to London theatregoers after two cult hits, A View From the Bridge and Hedda Gabler.