A play could be written about, or for, Michael Gambon's fingers, and perhaps Beckett's 1958 Krapp's Last Tape is it. I've seen this solo piece many times, most recently in a studio theatre rendition from Harold Pinter that opened a window on to his own mortality and won't quickly be forgotten. But what Gambon brings to the table - well, desk - is the abiding sense of a man struggling for his share of the light amidst darkness at the very moment that his powers may be slipping away.

A vital theatrical partnership gets renewed, and then some, in Jamie Lloyd's revival of Passion, a transforming production that not only marks the start of various Donmar-related tributes to Stephen Sondheim in his 80th birthday year but also reminds us that this theatre reopened its doors in 1992 with the UK premiere of Assassins, since which time it has staged five further Sondheim shows; Passion, to speak as openly as this musical's heroine does of the

You can see the appeal of being a slacker. You don’t work, you just sit around like a cool dude and shoot the breeze; you smoke, you drink, you take drugs, er, lots of drugs. You can call people “man”. Hell, you don’t even need to wear your sneakers all day - just kick them off and go barefoot. Only one problem: emotional commitment is a big no, no. American playwright Annie Baker’s new play, which opened at the Bush Theatre last night, takes a long calm look at slackerdom’s highs and lows.

Middle-class family angst is this season’s theme at the Royal Court Theatre. And, in his new play about sex and intimacy, which opened last night, playwright Nick Payne puts the lust in Wanderlust and creates a contemporary tale of wandering hands and wandering affections. We are in a nice suburban part of England, and the mix of pain and pleasure will be all too familiar to most audiences, whether they are teenagers who can squirm at the antics of the youngsters, or middle-aged couples who might find the more mature characters shockingly recognisable.

It's a strange thing that boxing, that most dramatic of sports, hasn't been the subject of more plays. It has a protagonist and antagonist, the ring is a ready-made stage, and the sport has thrown up more than its fair share of larger-than-life characters. So, as with buses, when you're waiting for one to come along, two arrive in quick succession; Roy Williams's Sucker Punch, which was at the Royal Court earlier this year, and now the equally brilliant Beautiful Burnout. Comparisons are invidious, so I won't make any, other than to remark that they are two very different beasts.

“I think men will enjoy the thriller aspect,” pronounces the heroine of this audaciously tortuous tale. “The machismo, the twists, the sex.” She may well be right; but if the men get all the best lines, there’s plenty here for women with an appetite for a bit of slick chicanery to relish too. Margaret, writer and celebrated shrink, is describing her own latest pot boiler. But she’s also summarising the plot of Richard Bean’s play, in turn based on David Mamet’s screenplay for the movie that marked his directorial screen debut back in 1987.

Design For Living is one of Noël Coward’s less performed plays but it fair crackles with bons mots - you know you’re in good hands when delightfully old-fashioned words like “horrid”, “bloody”, “cheap” and “vulgar” are tossed around with, well, gay abandon. What a shame, then, that Anthony Page’s production, while wonderfully easy on the eye and despite some spirited performances from its three leads, doesn’t quite catch fire.

“I want to disrupt your sense of logic and show you something really thrilling,” explains a young academic, as her animated scribbling on the whiteboard gains pace and incomprehensible complexity. It’s a promise that Complicite’s A Disappearing Number – now making its third London appearance – has little trouble fulfilling.

What is with the National and history plays? On the large stages of this theatre, the main fare is historical accounts of contemporary problems. Maybe the programmers here imagine that their audiences, like T S Eliot’s humankind, “can’t bear very much reality”. History always has a nostalgic glow. So instead of commissioning a new play about the current war in Afghanistan, the flagship venue is staging American playwright J T Rogers’s drama about the Soviet Union’s 1980s occupation and the covert war, waged by the CIA, to stop the reds by any means necessary.

It takes a brave company to revive a notorious Broadway flop. It takes an even braver one to supplement a small cast with an amateur, community chorus of over 60 people, onstage for almost the entire duration. The Young Vic can rarely be accused of lacking ambition, and their latest production – sprawling American musical The Human Comedy by Hair’s Galt MacDermot – is as ambitious as it gets. Reinventing a flawed fantasy-parable about community as genuine community theatre, they have tapped into a sincerity that no amount of slick Broadway effects could hope to match – a sincerity that, if it cannot quite redeem the play’s faults, sure as hell comes close.