Monday
If you want to catch Patrick Marber’s Turgenev rewrite Three Days in the Country at the National Theatre, you need to get your skates on. It finishes early next week. It’s your last chance this week for And Then Come the Nightjars at the Bristol Old Vic Studio, about a dying way of rural life. Also in Bristol there’s the latest from fab puppet company Green Ginger, whose Outpost at the Tobacco Factory is about two guards at a remote border crossing. Moira Buffini’s entertaining Handbagged brings the Queen and Margaret Thatcher to Cambridge Arts theatre. Actors Touring Company’s explosive production Martyr examines what happens when you really nail your colours to the mast – it’s at the North Wall in Oxford today and tomorrow before heading to the Traverse in Edinburgh on Thursday. 1927’s visually ravishing Golem shouldn’t be missed at Home in Manchester.
Tuesday
Amy Mason explores her Catholic upbringing in Mass at the Bike Shed in Exeter. The Barbican theatre’s Outpost pop-up festival begins at Royal William Yard in Plymouth and tonight includes Everything Must Go, which explores the true-life stories behind our failing high streets, and tomorrow features Smoking Apples’ tales of trawler fishermen, In Our Hands. Also in Plymouth at the Drum, you can see Chris Goode’s powerful exploration of fractured lives, Men in the Cities. Kneehigh’s riotous Dead Dog in a Suitcase stops off at the Everyman in Cheltenham. Conor McPherson’s The Night Alive is definitely worth seeing at the Lyric in Belfast as part of the Belfast international arts festival which also includes the Northern Irish premiere of the National Theatre’s production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time which is at the Grand Opera House. It’s your last chance this week for The Stick House, the promenade-style Angela Carter inspired fairytale at the Lo-co Klub in Bristol.
Wednesday
Hull’s Middle Child had plenty of attention in Hull with Weekend Rockstars, and now they tackle Philip Ridley’s visceral and stomach-churning Mercury Fur at the Lowgate Centre in Hull from tonight. Lovely to see Theatre-Rites back in action: they are at the Polka with a new show for 3 to 6 year olds called Beasty Baby which celebrates the rituals of early life. Lucy Morrison directs Nicola Wilson’s Plaques and Tangles, about a woman with a genetic risk of early onset Alzheimer’s, that starts at the Royal Court Upstairs tonight. The North Wall in Oxford hosts Gary McNair’s consummate piece of storytelling, Donald Robertson is not a Stand-Up Comedian, tonight before it heads to South Street in Reading tomorrow. Volt: Women in Circus is a double bill made by women as part of the ongoing Circus City in Bristol. At the Royal Exchange in Manchester, young audiences will thrill to the close shaves offered in Lewis Gibson’s The Chair. In Scotland, David Greig’s blissful love story, Midsummer, goes out on a Dundee Rep community tour: at Kirkton Community Centre tonight and Finmill Centre on Friday. Ghosts is in the main house at the Tron in Glasgow and from tonight you can also see Aby Watson and Alexander Horowitz’s There’s No Point Crying Over Spilled Milk about the growing up, remembering and mis-remembering. Life, death and the whole damn thing are explored in The Midnight Soup, a piece in which Leo Burtin and the audience cook together. It’s at ARC in Stockton tonight and at Café Lux in Pudsey on Friday. Andy Smith embodies the spirit of Preston over 80 years in The Preston Bill at the Continental, Preston, from tonight.
Thursday
Every Brilliant Thing is completely brilliant and it’s in Hanley tonight as part of Appetite in Stoke-on-Trent. Tonight Joanne opens at Soho theatre, London, with Tanya Moodie starring in the story of a woman under pressure.
Friday and the weekend
More thrills and spills in Bristol’s Circus City that tonight and tomorrow includes the UK premiere of L’Homme Boue, an intense exploration of the struggle to survive. Also tonight, Lucy Bailey revives Gaslight with Tara Fitzgerald at the Royal and Derngate in Northampton. At Curve in Leicester, Nikolai Foster’s inaugural production is A Streetcar Named Desire. At Camden People’s Theatre, Mamoro Iriguchi explores the notion of time through the screen life of Marlene Dietrich in 4D Cinema. On Saturday, Richard Jones directs a revival of Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape at the Old Vic. Saturday also sees the start of Kenneth Branagh’s Plays at the Garrick season kicking off with The Winter’s Tale with Judi Dench as Paulina and Branagh as Leontes.
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