Unexpectedly, there’s a sly reference to James Joyce’s Ulysses interpolated into Act One (in case we hadn’t caught the not so sly one, naming a leading character Leopold Bloom). While that’s a nice callback from brash commercial Hollywood to the high art salons of Paris, it also links the works. If Ulysses is the book whose legend persists despite so few people having read it, is The Producers its cinematic equivalent?  

The Bush is likely to continue its fine recent run of hit plays, with this funny, poignant, culturally authentic and beautifully acted two-hander, about an estranged mother and daughter struggling to heal old wounds. 

I love irony. Especially beautiful irony. So I’m very excited about the ironic gesture of staging a show with no words at the Royal Court, a venue which boasts of being the country’s premier new writing theatre. Billed as “a new experiment in performance”. Cow | Deer uses only sound to evoke the lives of two animals, one domesticated, the other wild.

The Ukraine war is not the only place of horror in the world, but it does present a challenge to theatre makers who want to respond to events that dominate the news. And which make us all feel powerless, including our leaders. Instead of staging a play such as Bad Roads, Ukrainian playwright Natal’ya Vorozhbit’s savage 2017 account of the conflict, the Royal Court has chosen a meta-theatrical and metaphorical response. 

Laura Benanti has been enchanting Broadway audiences for several decades now, and London has this week been let in on the secret that recently charmed playgoers at this summer's Edinburgh Festival: the comedienne perhaps best known in some circles for her wicked impersonations of Melania Trump can hold her own in a solo show that mixes self-deprecation and determination in equal measure.

Ever wondered if there was one moment when in-yer-face theatre started? Well, yes there was; there was one play that kicked off that whole 1990s sensibility, a drama that had a direct influence on Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill and Jez Butterworth, and an ongoing inspiration for countless others. That moment was January 1991, and the play was Philip Ridley’s The Pitchfork Disney.

The title refers to a line in Henry VI, Part III: the future Richard III boasts that midwives cried, "Oh Jesus bless us, he is born with teeth", a sign of both his monstrosity and his readiness to snarl and bite.

The cult film that director Theo van Gogh left behind when he was killed in 2004, Interview, has already been remade twice; now it’s back as a stage play, adapted and directed by Teunkie Van Der Sluijs. It’s a modern Oleanna, but with less savagery and more slink: the instructive clashing of two different generations.

$8.2B. That’s what can happen when you re-imagine Hamlet.

Playwright Mike Bartlett is, like many writers, a chronicler of both contemporary manners and of the state of the nation. In his latest domestic drama, which premieres at the Donmar Warehouse, he examines our anxieties about food, farming and the environment in a play of ideas that, despite its energy, is more cerebral than emotional.