Monday
Soho theatre’s Solo season begins with Sabrina Mahfouz’s very tasty titbit, Chef. David Suchet stars as Lady Bracknell in Adrian Noble’s revival of The Importance of Being Earnest at the Theatre Royal Bath. I’m sure he’ll be amazing, but given the lack of roles for older women, it seems a shame that a man is snaffling a prime one. Des Keogh plays George Bernard Shaw in My Fair Ladies at the Lyric in Belfast. The fine cross-artform Golive festival continues at the Lion and Unicorn and always springs many pleasant surprises.
Tuesday
The US’s gun laws come under scrutiny in I and the Village at London’s Theatre 503. You really shouldn’t miss Robert Icke’s devastating Oresteia at the Almeida or his collaboration with Duncan MacMillan on 1984 at the Playhouse in the capital’s West End.
Wednesday
It’s your last chance for Christopher Brett Bailey’s This Is How We Die, which is at Battersea Arts Centre to the end of the week. The History Boys is at the Civic in Darlington, a theatre that seldom gets a mention here.
Thursday
Kathryn Hunter is just sublime in Kafka’s Monkey, which arrives at Home in Manchester after an international tour. Cardiff’s The Other Room celebrates Welsh writers and theatre-makers with its Young Artists festival and includes specially commissioned plays from Tim Price and others. Ted Whitehead’s Alpha Beta is revived by Purni Morell at the Finborough in London’s Earls Court.
Friday and the weekend
Rory Kinnear opens in a stage adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial, directed by Richard Jones, at the Young Vic. The Woman in Black is revived at the Stephen Joseph in Scarborough, the theatre where it was first mounted. Still a real little shocker. Also tonight, Muriel Spark’s unsettling novella, The Driver’s Seat, is adapted and directed by National Theatre of Scotland’s Laurie Sansom at the Lyceum in Edinburgh. Meanwhile, at the Barbican, Robert Wilson performs in his own revival of Krapp’s Last Tape. Over at the London Wonderground, Black Cat Cabaret are in action with Nocturne. The Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park has Janie Dee in Torben Betts’ new version of The Seagull. Talawa’s Firsts includes a mixed bill of work by new writers this evening. On Saturday, Tangled Feet’s Care, an aerial theatre examination of the NHS, opens at Watford Palace, and the Hoard festival celebrates the unearthing of the Staffordshire hoard of Anglo-Saxon metal work at the increasingly ambitious New Vic in Newcastle-under-Lyme.
