This Dickens classic is an annual treat, or a Christmas trial – depending on your point of view. At the Old Vic, it was adapted by Jack Thorne in 2017, and like the holly and the ivy has been a hardy perennial ever since. Here Scrooge has been played by stars such as Rhys Ifans, Paterson Joseph, Stephen Mangan and Christopher Eccleston. This time it’s the turn of John Simm.

Not just a backstage musical, a backroom musical!

In the 70s, Follies and A Chorus Line took us into the rehearsal room giving us a chance to look under the bonnet to see the cogs of the Musical Theatre machine bump and grind as a show gets on its feet. But what of the other room, the writers’ room, where the ideas emerge mistily and the egos clang in conflict? [title of show] pulls back the curtain behind the curtain, behind the curtain.

Picture this: framing the stage are two pearlescent clouds which, throughout the performance, gently pulsate with flickering light. Behind them on a giant screen is a spinning globe, its seas twinkling like a million stars.

Suddenly, this magical image is rent asunder. Thunder and lightning shake the heavens and torrential rain cascades down in stair rods. Spotlights flash and dance through billowing smoke while Laurie Anderson serenades the tempest on her violin and Kenny Wollesen lashes symbols and drums into a clamorous frenzy. The Apocalypse!

DEATHLY HUSH.

Cryptocurrency is like the myth of El Dorado – a promised land made of fool’s gold. Despite its liberatory potential, it frequently attracts sharks or, as the title of Beru Tessema’s new play indicates, hungry wolves that gobble up defenceless sheep.

Mac is in prison for a long stretch. He is calm, contemplative almost, understands how to do his time and has only one rule – nobody, cellmate or guard, can touch the photo of his daughter, then three years old, attached to his wall. Though he is a man who gets through the days with few problems, he solves them through violence. On his release, his only wish is to find the daughter who will have forgotten him. 

Can experimental theatre survive the decades? This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Forced Entertainment theatre company, whose mission is summarised (by themselves) as “tearing up the rulebook”.

The Catalan capital has given its name to a famous number in the Stephen Sondheim musical, Company. And here it is lending geographical specificity to the second two-hander, following the far-superior Camp Siegfried, from American writer Bess Wohl to reach London in recent years.

It’s 1648 in Agra, and an excitable young guardsman has come up with an idea: a giant flying platform that he calls an “aeroplat”. As he might slide off it in transit, for good measure he gives it a belt to tie him down. It would be a “seat belt”, he suggests triumphantly.

Hanif Kureishi’s 1990 novel The Buddha of Suburbia begins like this: “My name is Karim Amir, and I am an Englishman born and bred, almost”. Almost. Yes, that's good. We are in 1970s south-east London, and this immediately introduces, despite its tentative tone, the protagonist as a young man trying to define his identity.

It is unsurprising to learn in the post-show Q&A that each audience receives Jonathan Maitland’s new play based on his 2006 memoir differently. My house laughed a lot (me especially) but some see the tragic overwhelming the comic, and the laughs dry up. When it comes to humour, as is the case with mothers, it’s each to their own.