Bingo: Scenes of Money and Death is the misleading, jokey title of a play about Shakespeare in his ignoble last years, unable to write further, isolated from his beloved London, and hemmed in by local politics. Shakespeare is invited to become a town councillor! To take sides in a dispute about land enclosures! It’s a cracking re-visioning of the genius whom films and myth have preserved in the aspic of lusty, piratic eloquence.

Is there a more evocative location than Essex? In his 2000 play Under the Blue Sky, one of David Eldridge’s characters shouts the unforgettable words: “I’m from Essex and I’m dancing!” Now back at this venue for the first time since that play, Eldridge proves that he is much more than the common characterisation of him as “the writer as bloke”. But can his new play, which opened last night and is set in his favourite county, dance as well as his previous ones?

Another week, another tragedy, and another wedding dance routine set to a thumping soundtrack. But while The Changeling buckled under the pressure Joe Hill-Gibbins applied at the Young Vic a few weeks ago, Cheek by Jowl’s ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore bleeds fresh and glossy under Declan Donnellan’s assured touch. This pop-culture remix of a Jacobean classic will pulse long in ears and eyes – a macabre delight that makes a first-rate evening out of a rather second-rate play.

Half-term may be nearly over for many, but there is no shortage of children’s theatre on offer in London at the moment. Long-running family favourites including Shrek the Musical and The Lion King have recently been joined by the mighty Matilda the Musical, and fans of Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse (still stabled in the West End) will be delighted by the author’s latest stage adaptation – Twist of Gold – playing at the Polka Theatre.

Four people walked out of Filter’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream last night. The rest stayed to cheer an hour and 20 minutes of fast and furious filleted Shakespeare from a company which has made its name merging visual and musical forms, reinventing classics and creating new devised pieces.

Who’d have thought that a long-gone turning point in the story of cinema would be the high-concept theme of the 2011/2012 season? Hard on the heels of The Artist, the lauded silent movie in which a stubborn star can’t, or won’t, make the transition to sound, comes all all-singing, all-dancing treatment of the very same era and story in Singin’ in the Rain.

King Lear was the play that launched Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory 12 years ago. The company, under the inspired artistic direction of Andrew Hilton, opened its 2012 season with a brand new production that displays all the qualities that have made this remarkable company unique in Britain.

As an evening out, Angus is about as nutritious as the midget gems dispensed by one of the heroine’s confidantes (and offered in heaps to the audience waiting in the foyer). Directed by Ryan McBryde, this stage adaptation of Louise Rennison’s chirpy bestsellers just about hangs together, even though the moments where it succeeds most effectively are the points which most explicitly reference other coming-of-age narratives.

Drum rolls, fiddles and flutes were all in action last night at the Donmar Warehouse to herald the beginning of an era. After ten successful years under the direction of Michael Grandage, it was the turn of the theatre’s new Artistic Director Josie Rourke to step forward and lay her claim to the West End’s most intimate space. If Rourke was making a statement with her first production, Farquhar’s broad comedy The Recruiting Officer, then it was one loud with capital letters and laden with exclamation marks – an exuberant, joyous shout of arrival.

One look at Tom Scutt’s meticulous design for Jeremy Herrin’s production of this savage Alan Ayckbourn comedy, and you know you’re in the 1970s. Wood veneer and faux leather lend a shiny, wipe-clean surface to this desolately unhappy home, where everything is in shades of brown: beige carpets, beige walls, beige lives. When laughter comes, it is often choking; Herrin’s direction is so mercilessly precise, and the acting so acute, that though it is undeniably funny, the play leaves you bruised and punchdrunk.