Monday
Teatro Vivo’s The Residents is a ghost story being staged in real homes across south London. Pentabus’s touring show Here I Belong, about the changing way of rural life, is at the Bike Shed in Exeter. There is plenty to enjoy in the Compass festival of live art in Leeds which includes an astonishing rice installation by Stan’s Cafe entitled Of All the People in All the World and a new piece from the mighty Lone Twin, Last Act of Rebellion.
Tuesday
Alan Harris’s joyful offbeat romance Love, Lies and Taxidermy is at the Sherman in Cardiff. Nancy Harris and Marc Teitler’s Baddies, a family musical exploring why we need villains, is terrific fun and is back at the Unicorn. Mark Rylance’s teenage years in the American midwest provide the inspiration for Nice Fish, a comedy that begins at the Harold Pinter. Circoncentrique’s Gasp! offers a game of thrills, spills and physical endurance at Warwick Arts Centre. It’s your last chance for Key Change, a fine piece created by Open Clasp Theatre with women in prisons: it’s at the Gulbenkian in Canterbury tonight then on tour. Camden People’s Theatre celebrates the rise of “gig theatre” with their All the Right Notes season. Frantic Assembly’s tear-jerking family drama Things I Know to Be True finishes its tour at the Minerva in Chichester.
Wednesday
Buzzcut take over the CCA in Glasgow with the double bill of Eilidh MacAskill’s Stud and Sh!t Theatre’s Letters to Windsor House. Andy Smith is a great theatre-maker and his story of one man’s life in a fast-changing world, The Preston Bill, is at the Bike Shed in Exeter. Gecko’s beautiful and surprising Institute, a place where filing cupboards store memories, is at Liverpool Playhouse until Saturday. Two Destination Language’s Manpower considers life after Brexit – it’s at Colchester Arts Centre tonight and Theatre Royal Winchester on Sunday. One night only for Chris O’Connell’s Breathe, about four women from different parts of the world finding ways to survive, which is at Urban Coffee in FarGo Village, Coventry, as part of the Rising Global Peace Forum.
Thursday
Sally Cookson’s Peter Pan flies into the NT’s Olivier theatre with the excellent Anna Francolini replacing an injured Sophie Thompson as Captain Hook. Phyllida Lloyd’s highly acclaimed all-female Henry IV joins The Tempest and Julius Caesar in rep at the Donmar’s King’s Cross space. Francesca Annis, Deborah Findlay and Ron Cook star in Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children which is directed by James Macdonald at the Royal Court. Katy Baird’s slyly entertaining look at our relationship to work and money, Workshy, is at the Waterside in Sale tonight and at Theatre Delicatessen in Sheffield on Saturday.
Friday and the weekend
What would you say if the government banned us all from using more than 140 words per day? Find out in Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons at the Tobacco Factory in Bristol. Volcano’s Macbeth – Directors Cut, originally staged by the late Nigel Charnock, is reimagined at the Point in Eastleigh. Some of the country’s most innovative youth theatres will be at the Traverse in Edinburgh for the Chrysalis festival. At Home in Manchester, Polly Findlay directs Niamh Cusack and Jamie Ballard in David Watson’s new version of Ibsen’s Ghosts. James Graham’s political drama This House starts at the Garrick. Convicts and Lunatics, a collaboration between Red Ladder and Gracefool Collective, is a double bill of theatre and dance exploring 100 years of wayward women and their dangerous ideas. It goes out on tour from the Square Chapel in Halifax tonight.
