The future is a bad place. Most of our predictions about climate change and the world’s resources seem to come from a mindset of mute despair. In New Atlantis – part of the Enlightenment Café series produced by LAStheatre, which brings together artists, scientists and thinkers as well as theatre-makers – the future is also dry. Very dry. Water scarcity on a global scale means that the population of Miami has abandoned the city and the people of London are suffering a drought-ridden existence.

Sometimes the deadliest violence is silent. The publicity for Caroline Horton’s new absurdist satire, Islands, points out that Oxfam estimates that some $18.5 trillion is siphoned out of the world economy into tax havens by wealthy individuals. That’s some nest egg! Likewise, Christian Aid has calculated that 1,000 children die every day as a result of tax evasion. As we know, the super-rich one per cent own most of global wealth. Dreadful. Clearly unjust. But what can theatre do about it?

Disillusioned with our modern world? Why not journey back into an idyllic past, when trains were benign, anthropomorphic creatures rather than sources of commuter angst, red petticoats held life-saving powers, and it was perfectly all right for children to accept sweets from a stranger.

Mike Bartlett is the most prolific and talented British playwright to emerge in the past decade. Not only has he created large-scale epics in a variety of styles — from the science-fiction fable Earthquakes in London to the Shakespearean King Charles III — but he has also delivered a series of short plays — My Child, Contractions and An Intervention — in which he hones down the story into sharp shards of powerful emotion. Running at about 55 minutes, Bull is one of these.

When a play is preceded by a long list of content warnings, it’s hard not to let your judgement be coloured in advance. Sexual violence, strong language, strobe lighting, smoke effects, audience-actor interaction – we’re told in advance that Liberian Girl has them all. As such, the atmosphere as the audience arrives and people find a place to stand on the red sand-strewn set is tense.

It’s true that there is something wildly, garishly, theatrical about Pedro Almodóvar’s films – none more so than this rampant farce – but it’s equally true that their sensibility is far removed from what the English might deem farce, and that their speed of delivery leaves not a millisecond to draw breath, let alone sing a song. So where does that leave Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, the Musical? Lost in translation; twice over.

There is a tree on stage. Not a real tree but a full-size fake one (made by Take 1 Scenic Services) that reaches the ceiling, with lots of branches and leaves. As the audience enters the Old Vic auditorium for this in-the-round production (first seen at Manchester Royal Exchange in 2013) they have to cross the stage, where performers Daniel Kitson and Tim Key are laying tape into various shapes on the floor, an act that will be explained much later in the evening.

Can a country like Russia escape its history? In Moses Raine’s new play — transferring to the West End from the tiny Old Red Lion pub theatre where it was first seen in May 2014 — the answer seems to be no. Like Tena Stivicic’s 3 Winters at the National, the drama tells the story of a nation through the close study of three generations under one roof, in this case a small flat in contemporary Moscow. As you’d expect, each age cohort is shaped by its political, social and cultural experiences.

Everything about this little-known and largely forgotten show suggests epic, starting with the title: multiple locations, ambitious concept, big ideas. But like so much of Jerry Herman's work - and the received wisdom on it is invariably wide of the mark - The Grand Tour is a chamber piece at heart. Adapted from the Franz Werfel play Jacobowsky and the Colonel, the show focuses on a  Polish Jew, Jacobowsky, and an anti-Semitic Polish Colonel, Stjerbinsky, who are thrown together in a desperate flight across France from the fast-advancing Nazi tsunami.

Timber! would be best described as a folk-themed lumberjack circus show. Its creators, Cirque Alfonse, hail from rural Quebec, but often, as they indulge in jigs and reels, banjo and mandolin, amongst acrobatics and action, their antics recall the more familiar backwoods traditions of the Appalachians, their hillbilly US counterparts. However, the afternoon matinee where I caught the show was filled with families, lots of kids coming to the end of their Christmas break.