Monday
Ross Sutherland’s widely praised solo show Standby for Tape Back-Up, a performance based around an old videotape found in his grandfather’s garage, is at Soho theatre. The Hoard festival at Staffordshire’s New Vic proves what a regional theatre with ambition and imagination can do in terms of delivering many different kinds of writing. Do have a browse through the programme for the Greater Manchester fringe festival where there’s pretty well something for everyone. Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s The Invisible at London’s Bush theatre considers the way the poor are being denied justice due to legal aid cuts.
Tuesday
Lucy Prebble’s The Effect asks is love just a drug and what makes us human? It gets a great revival at the Crucible Studio in Sheffield in Sheffield by Daniel Evans. Fishamble’s Silent, about a man who has lost everything, arrives at Soho. Every Brilliant Thing is one of the funniest and most heartbreaking plays you’ll see and it’s at the Southbank. The creepy Fiction, played in the dark and delivered through headphones, returns to Battersea Arts Centre.
Wednesday
There is still time to slip into see one of the best productions of the year so far: Robert Icke’s Oresteia at Islington’s Almeida. Michael Longhurst’s A Number is definitely a must-see at the Young Vic as is Tim Crouch’s An Oak Tree in the NT’s Temporary Space. David Halliwell’s Little Malcolm and his Struggle Against the Eunuchs is revived at Southwark Playhouse.
Thursday
Nick Payne’s wonderful Constellations, a two-hander about a relationship with infinite possibilities, goes back into the West End: Louise Brealey and Joe Armstrong star at the Trafalgar Studios. Frantic Assembly’s artistic director Scott Graham has gone back to his home town of Corby to make a show with local residents about the events in our lives that shape who we are; it’s showing at the Corby Cube. . Slung Low’s reworking of the King Arthur myth, made with Sheffield People’s Theatre, is at the Crucible and on the neighbouring streets. Bea Roberts’s Infinity Pool, a modern retelling of Madame Bovary using projectors and PowerPoint, is at the Tobacco Factory in Bristol. The new-writing festival Hotbed is at the Cambridge Junction, from tonight and features new work from Dugout Theatre, Luke Wright, Craig Baxter and more. Positive at north London’s Park is a comedy about outdated perceptions of HIV and is inspired by true stories.
Friday and the weekend
Tonight Neck of the Woods, a wolfish tale with Charlotte Rampling, starts at the Manchester international festival, where Caryl Churchill’s The Skriker and the Rufus Norris-directed Wonder.land are already under way. Bryony Kimmings and Tim Grayburn consider clinical depression and issues around men, love and the brain in Fake It ’til you Make It at the Southbank from tonight. Victoria Melody previews her new show, Hair Peace, exploring where her hair extensions came from, at Farnham Maltings, Surrey. The Bristol Shakespeare festival gets under way tonight it includes a subterranean version of Macbeth in the supposedly haunted Redcliffe Caves. On Saturday, Charles Edwards plays Richard II at Shakespeare’s Globe in a revival by Simon Godwin.
