Hunger for the gruesome horrors and euphoric highs of Greek tragedy seems to be stronger than ever. Yet when it comes to epic sequences, nothing in recent decades has quite had the impact of Peter Hall’s Aeschylus Oresteia at the National Theatre or John Barton’s three-night RSC journey from Aulis to Tauris The Greeks. Now Age of Rage from Ivo van Hove and his Internationaal Theater/Toneelgroep Amsterdam joins them in the pantheon of great theatre.

We are in a room in a simply decorated house in northwest London, where an Ethiopian-British family is gathering for a funeral “tea” for 28-year-old Ife, their first-born son and beloved twin brother of aspiring artist Aida. He has died of his crack addiction. But this is not exactly the house of the title.

No surreys, fringes or corny chap-slapping: the Rodgers and Hammerstein revival that has arrived at the Young Vic from New York, trailing a Tony award, is no ordinary makeover. Daniel Fish, its director, has spent the best part of 15 years stripping down and remodelling the 1943 original.

“We all make history, one way or another.” But some of us make more history than others, and a group of 27 English schoolboys who got lost in Southern Germany in 1936 haven’t made much, unfortunately.

The traditional, and much derided, well-made play is meant to have a beginning, middle and end. Although playwright David Eldridge often writes in opposition to these outdate forms, his trilogy about relationships, which started in 2017 with the hit show Beginning, now reaches its second part with Middle, which opened tonight at the National Theatre.

Lucy Bailey’s joyous, visually ravishing Much Ado About Nothing opens on a sombre note. On stage there is laughter and merriment as people prepare for a party in the sprawling grounds of an Italian estate, but then a lone soldier enters the auditorium, his head wrapped in a bandage, and the tension becomes palpable.

At long last, the giant has come back. Over a decade after its critical apotheosis on both sides of the Atlantic, Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem returns to London in an astonishing revival starring Mark Rylance as the high priest of its proceedings. With the renewed intensity of its vision of an England in crisis, Butterworth’s infinitely rich play is proof that legends age well. 

National statistics tell us that, in the year ending September 2021, 41% of rape victims in England and Wales eventually withdrew their support for prosecution. That justice is not always blind may have something to do with this.

Punchdrunk’s latest epic undertaking may be inspired by the legend of Troy, but this is nothing less than a dark journey into a mythological underworld. The company has brought its thrilling discombobulating vision to a venue that sprawls across 100,000 sq ft of two former ammunition factories in Woolwich; the result, appropriately, is theatrical dynamite.

Inspiration jostles irritation in Marys Seacole, Jackie Sibblies Drury's Off Broadway hit from 2019 that has arrived at the Donmar as part of a banner season of late for Black American writing in the capital (cf. "Daddy": A Melodrama at the Almeida and Is God Is last year at the Royal Court).