Monday
Jane Wainwright’s Jinny, about a modern, female Jimmy Porter, is on tonight at Derby theatre, where Osborne’s Look Back in Anger also plays this week. At the Lyttelton, London, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom by August Wilson is wonderful. Aoife Duffin is superb in the stage version of Eimear McBride’s A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing at the Young Vic, London.
Tuesday
Quarantine are one of the great companies of the last 20 years, and their epic quartet called Summer. Autumn. Winter. Spring. is at the Old Granada Studios, Manchester. Yaël Farber directs a rare revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s Les Blancs, a play about identity, self-determination and revolution, at the Olivier, London. It’s your last chance for Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun which finishes its tour at the Belgrade, Coventry. Lucy Bailey’s fine staging of Great Expectations continues at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds. At the Bike Shed, Exeter, Sian Owen’s This Land asks who owns the ground beneath our feet. David Leddy always surprises and his latest, International Waters, is at the Tron, Glasgow. At Jackson’s Lane, London, Bikes and Rabbits presents These Books Are Made for Walking, which mixes theatre, circus and a love of reading, and sounds lovely. This Last Tempest, Uninvited Guests’ sequel to Shakespeare’s final play, is at BAC, London. The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama’s new writing festival begins in Cardiff and features new plays by Elinor Cook, Ali Taylor, Joe Ward Munrow and Dafydd James. Greg Wohead’s Come Back Special, a solo re-enactment of Elvis Presley’s 1968 TV special, is at Shoreditch Town Hall.
Wednesday
Lesley Manville and Jeremy Irons star in Richard Eyre’s revival of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night at Bristol Old Vic. Vamos Theatre’s The Best Thing, at the Marlowe Studio, Canterbury, is about a young woman forced to give up her baby for adoption in the 1960s. It’s flawed but genuinely moving and exquisitely performed. Human trafficking is the subject of Martin O’Brien’s This Is My Body at the Northcott, Exeter. Touretteshero’s very funny and very necessary Backstage in Biscuitland is at the Mill Arts Centre, Banbury, tonight and on tour. Catherine-Anne Toupin’s comic and creepy Right Now moves from the Ustinov, Bath, into the Bush, London.
Thursday
Kate Fleetwood and James Norton star in Simon Evans’ revival of Tracy Letts’ darkly comic Bug at the pop-up space Found 111 in the old Central St Martins building in Charing Cross Road, London. Ernest Hemingway’s only play, The Fifth Column, set in Madrid at the height of the civil war, is in previews at Southwark Playhouse. Michel Tremblay’s classic French-Canadian play about a dysfunctional family, Forever Yours, Mary Lou, gets its UK premiere at the Ustinov, Bath.
Friday
A journey through memory and someone else’s life is undertaken in Rebecca Sharp’s The Air That Carries the Weight, which gets its world premiere at the Traverse, Edinburgh, from tonight. Sarah Punshon’s We’re Stuck!, an interactive adventure for 8- to 11-year-olds featuring robots starts at Shoreditch Town Hall.
