Monday
It’s almost your last chance to catch Helen McCrory in The Deep Blue Sea at the National Theatre, where you also need to get your skates on for the rumbustious Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour and the Young Chekhov season.
Tuesday
Valentijn Dhaenens’ BigMouth, an astonishing piece about the art of speech-making, is at the Pit at the Barbican from tonight until Thursday. The Ruby Dolls are out on tour with The Brides of Bluebeard beginning at the OSO theatre in Barnes tonight and tomorrow. HIV is under the microscope in Outbox’s Affection at the Glory in Haggerston from tonight. Amy Shindler’s Burning Bridges, about a love triangle, opens at Battersea’s Theatre 503. Ross Sutherland’s Party Trap, which opens at Shoreditch Town Hall, features a TV journalist and a politician clashing live on air.
Wednesday
Catch one thing this week and it should be The Prime of Ms David Hoyle at Chelsea theatre, where the maverick and unpredictable performer will be providing an education Jean Brodie-style. There’s still time to see one of the offerings at the HighTide festival in Aldeburgh including Theresa Ikoko’s Girls, about three teenagers kidnapped by Boko Haram, and later in the week In Fidelity, Elinor Cook’s Pilgrims and more. Every Brilliant Thing is on tour and at the West End Centre in Aldershot tonight. John McGrath’s The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil moves to the Lyceum in Edinburgh. The Shakespeare’s Globe production of Two Gentlemen of Verona is at Dundee Rep. Scott Turnbull’s Where Do all the Dead Pigeons Go? was enormously likable when I caught it in Edinburgh and should be tighter and shorter at Camden People’s theatre this week where it plays in tandem with Documental’s Pulling Out, which is about teenage fathers.
Thursday
Paines Plough’s Roundabout season, which includes the fab Love, Lies and Taxidermy, is at the Lighthouse, Poole. Suzan-Lori Parks’s Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3) considers the price of freedom and is at the Royal Court downstairs.
Friday and the weekend
The Out There festival in Great Yarmouth begins with outdoor shows on the seafront and Pickled Image’s Coulrophobia at the Drill House before launching into a weekend of great shows from great companies including Joli Vyann, Mimbre, NoFit State, New Art Club and more. Keith Huff’s US police drama, A Steady Rain, is at the Tron in Glasgow. Beatrix Potter didn’t just write Peter Rabbit and other stories – she was also a successful sheep farmer, and that aspect of her life is considered in Meeting Bea at the Old Laundry in Bowness. Mark Thomas’s The Red Shed is at Liverpool Everyman. On Saturday, Theatre in the Mill in Bradford hosts Rachael Young’s I, Myself & Me, a solo show about being in your 30s and running out of time. Also on Saturday, Shakespeare’s Cymbeline is reimagined as Imogen by Matthew Dunster at the Globe. Tony’s Last Tape, based on the diaries of Tony Benn, is back at Nottingham Playhouse. The big event of the weekend is National Theatre Wales’s homage to Roald Dahl in City of the Unexpected, a phizz-whizzing two-day long festival in Cardiff.
