What joy it is to have pantomime and Christmas shows back with full audiences up and down the country – everything from local shows to star-driven productions, many of them postponed from 2020 but with an awful lot happening in between to provide the topical references.

When Ian McKellen, one of our greatest Shakespearean actors, gave us his acclaimed Widow Twankey at the Old Vic in 2004, some wondered why he had waited till he was in his sixties to perform in a leading role in pantomime (second comic policeman at Ipswich in 1962 doesn't count). Well, he has made us wait again for his second tilt at a Dame, but it was worth it.

Do you remember how the 1001 Nights ends? You know how it starts: Scheherazade has been married to a king who kills his brides the day after he marries them. She tells him a story so good that he simply has to know what happens next, and she survives the next day. This goes on for 1001 nights, until… what?

The scene is set onstage in the first minutes. And it remains a stage throughout this harmonious production. The action takes place in a severe court and a more liberal forest, but really the setting is always a place of imagination, a theatre. Jaques' most anthologised speech, "All the world's a stage ... " is its keynote: all the actors are players, in both senses of the word.

We’ve had 75 years to get used to Scrooge McDuck, so we can hardly complain if the Americans indulge in a little cultural appropriation and send Charles Dickens’ misanthrope to Depression-era Tennessee for another whirl on the catharsis-redemption ride.

Pain is, at one and the same time, something to avoid, and also something you can use. Kahlil Gibran, the Lebanese-American mystical author of the 1923 best-seller The Prophet, concludes that, despite suffering, “all is well”, but how true is that? In his award-winning play, which premiered in Boston in 2011, American playwright Stephen Karam examines the issues in a thoroughly original, brilliantly constructed and thematically compelling way.

Is British new writing in deep trouble? With the Arts Council defunding venues such as the Hampstead Theatre, the Donmar and the Gate, and past masters such as Terry Johnson underperforming, the signs are not good. But what about the National Theatre, the country’s flagship — can it step up to fill the gap? Well, judging by recent flops such as Moira Buffini’s Manor, I wouldn’t bank on it.

What do you mean you haven’t heard of the newsboys’ strike of 1899? It’s a classic David and Goliath story: a group of New York kids selling newspapers for Joseph Pulitzer (him of the prize), who take a stand when their boss tries to charge them 20% extra to buy their “papes”.

Clint Dyer is the first black director of Othello at the National Theatre, a venue that once staged the piece with its actor founder Laurence Olivier playing the lead role in blackface. 

As bio-musicals continue to have their heyday, it makes sense for the Young Vic to throw its hat in the ring and champion a work about the hugely influential Nelson Mandela. But this new musical about the South African anti-apartheid activist and statesman is such a baffling hodgepodge that it actually risks being a disservice to Mandela’s legacy.