Is it possible to successfully challenge naturalism in British theatre today? At a time when audiences crave feelgood dramas, uplifting musicals and classic well-made plays, there is very little room for experimental writing.

Wow! James Norton naked! Wow! New play by Ivo van Hove. Wow! It’s four hours long. Wow! Wow! Wow! The much anticipated play of the year, an adaptation of Hanya Yanagihara’s 700-page bestselling novel of 2015, comes to the West End in a huge blaze of publicity.

For a show that comes with a trigger warning about the themes of racism, gang violence, toxic relationships, sexual abuse, child abuse, domestic violence and suicide it will tackle, For Black Boys… is unexpectedly joyful.

Complicité, the adventurous theatre company led today by Simon McBurney, one of its founders, is now 40. Over the last four decades, McBurney and his collaborators have changed the face of theatre.

Rooted in the training of Jacques Lecoq, along with Robert Lepage, Ariane Mnouchkine and others, they have created work that combines poetry and intelligence, illuminating the stage in a way that combines the inspiration of the best story-telling with the play of the imagination.

One wonders if Ricky Simmonds and Simon Vaughan pondered long over their debut musical’s title. Silvio might invite hubristic comparisons with Evita (another unlikely political leader), but Berlusconi feels a little Hamilton – too soon? They went with the surname of their anti-hero which appears a mite unwieldy on the playbill.

The act of idol worship is, at one and the same time, both distantly ancient and compellingly contemporary. Whether it is Superman, Wonder Woman or Black Panther, our love of the superhero is both an aspiration and an abnegation. Looking at a star, the fan sees both their own potential and feels their own inferiority.

You don’t have to be Scandinavian to act out Strindberg’s fantastical extremes at the highest level, but I’ve not seen any British performers come close to what Norwegians are giving us right now at the Coronet Theatre. Expectations ran high following Pia Tjelta’s lacerating performance in Ibsen’s Little Eyolf in 2018 and her Ellida in The Lady from the Sea the following year, and here, as then, she and her colleagues are simply stunning.

Is it a good idea to work with your spouse? The Way Old Friends Do, a love letter to ABBA tribute bands – which premiered at the Birmingham Rep last month and now visits the Park Theatre in north London – is a joint venture by actor and first-time playwright Ian Hallard and Mark Gatiss, who is both his director and his husband.

Artificial intelligence has become an even hotter topic since Jordan Harrison’s Marjorie Prime was first staged in Los Angeles in 2014, so it’s not surprising that the play’s handling of AI is being seen as its unique selling point. (It subsequently played Off Broadway and was made into a film.) 

Some plays are instantly forgettable, others leave a tender fold in the memory. I well remember seeing Zinnie Harris’s evocatively titled Further Than the Furthest Thing in 2000, and marveling at its strange beauty and linguistic flair. Now revived at the Young Vic, in a beautifully visual, if tonally uncertain, production by Jennifer Tang, one of the venue’s Genesis Fellows, this version confirms my initial impression of a haunting story told in a magical way.