Monday
Beth Steel’s Labyrinth is at Hampstead theatre with a story of Latin American financial crisis. Made in Dagenham gets its regional premiere at the Queen’s in Hornchurch. Atiha Sen Gupta’s Counting Stars is set in the toilet of a nightclub and it’s at the Theatre Royal Stratford East. Luke Sheppard directs the psychological thriller Night Must Fall, at Salisbury Playhouse. Vicky Featherstone’s production for NTS of Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour is in the Dorfman at the National Theatre, and there’s still time to see the Young Chekhov plays in the Olivier. Kathryn Hunter stars in The Emperor directed by Walter Meierjohann at the Young Vic, where you can also see Billie Piper in Yerma if you can grab a return ticket.
Tuesday
Unlimited festival is always terrific, and it starts today at the Southbank Centre in London. It features Liz Carr’s Assisted Suicide: The Musical, Claire Cunningham and Jess Curtis’s The Way You Look (At Me) Tonight and Noëmi Lakmaier taking flight with the help of 30,000 helium balloons, as well as new work from Chris Thorpe and Rachel Bagshaw on living with pain. John McGrath’s The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil continues at Dundee Rep until the weekend. Samantha Ellis’s How to Date a Feminist reinvents romance at the Arcola. Kieran Knowles’s Operation Crucible, set against the backdrop of the Sheffield blitz, opens at the Sheffield Crucible Studio. Eloise and the Curse of the Golden Whisk plays the Wardrobe theatre in Bristol, and it’s a show for all the family from the lovely Wardrobe Ensemble.
Wednesday
Nathaniel Martello-White’s family drama Torn begins at the Royal Court Upstairs in London. The Glasgow Girls takes up residence for the rest of the week at Oxford Playhouse. Maria Aberg’s revival of Doctor Faustus joins Polly Findlay’s production of The Alchemist in rep at the Barbican.
Thursday
Maxine Peake stars as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire directed by Sarah Frankcom at the Royal Exchange in Manchester. Every Brilliant Thing goes out on tour starting at the Hazlitt Arts Centre in Maidstone tonight. Dates this week too in Alton, Worthing and Corsham so check out the Paines Plough website. Also on the website are details of the tour of Love, Lies and Taxidermy, Growth and I Got Superpowers for My Birthday, which are all at the Lowry in Salford this week. Aphra Behn’s anarchic restoration comedy, The Rover, starts in the Swan at Stratford-upon-Avon. The Globe’s Two Gentlemen of Verona is at the Northcott in Exeter.
No Man’s Land begins at Wyndham’s in the West End. Growing up and trying to fit in is the subject of Zoe Cooper’s Jess and Joe Forever which starts at the Orange Tree. Sh!t Theatre’s very enjoyable Women’s Hour is back on the road and is at Metropolitan Arts Centre in Belfast tonight and tomorrow. The High Tide festival begins in Aldeburgh in Suffolk and starts today with Theresa Ikoko’s Girls, about three teenagers kidnapped by Boko Haram, and Elinor Cook’s Pilgrims about trying to conquer the world. The plays are joined tomorrow by Anders Lustgarten’s admired The Sugar-Coated Bullets of the Bourgeoisie and Rob Drummond’s risky In Fidelity. To Kill a Mockingbird is revived by Elizabeth Newman at the Octagon in Bolton. Summer Heart at the Tron in Glasgow rethinks the recital as it tells of the life of Holocaust survivorAlice Herz-Sommer.
Friday and the weekend
Nick Dear puts an imaginative spin on the relationship between Shakespeare and the cross-dressing Earl of Southampton in Dedication from Friday at the Nuffield in Southampton. Nikolai Foster’s revival of The Importance of Being Earnest begins at Birmingham Rep. On Saturday the terrific Frantic Assembly bring their international collaboration Andrew Bovell’s Things I Know to Be True, which has already had a successful run in Australia, to the Lyric Hammersmith in London before a UK tour. Northern Broadsides’ revival of JB Priestley’s When We Are Married begins a tour at York Theatre Royal. Dominic Hill’s revival of Sheridan’s The Rivals begins at Bristol Old Vic.
