Monday
Staging a Revolution celebrates the 10th anniversary of Belarus Free Theatre with an impressive programme of performances and discussions at various secret locations and the Young Vic in London, including some of their most acclaimed productions: 4.48 Psychosis, Minsk 2011, Being Harold Pinter and more. The wonderfully knotty Confirmation considers political extremism at West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds until Wednesday. Dirty Protest’s award-winning Parallel Lines is on tour, and hits the Soar Centre in Penygraig tonight before heading to Ffwrnes in Llanelli on Wednesday and the Hafren in Newtown on Friday. At the Tobacco Factory in Bristol, And Now: The World! considers being young in the digital age. Sibylle Berg’s piece won Theatre Heute’s play of the year award, so it should be worth a peek. There is still time to nab a ticket for the highly praised Young Chekhov season at Chichester festival theatre, and you might get one for Medea at the Almeida, north London. This week is also your last chance for Oresteia at Trafalgar Studios in London, definitely my pick of the year so far. It ends on Saturday. It’s also your last chance for Joe Hill-Gibbins’s racy take on Measure for Measure at the Young Vic. Experimental theatre-maker Penny Arcade is in action at the Soho theatre, London, with Longing Lasts Longer. I saw it in Edinburgh and its mix of eccentricity and exuberance is very engaging.
Tuesday
Roger Michell revives Harley Granville Barker’s Waste, a really terrific Edwardian play, at the National Theatre from tonight. Barney Norris’s quiet, doleful elegy for a disappearing world, Eventide, plays the Salberg Studio in Salisbury from tonight. The Happiness Project, at the Roundhouse, north London, is created by 12- to 19-year-olds together with neuroscientists and psychologists, plus Tashi Gore and Jess Thorpe. Dry Land, at Jermyn Street theatre in the West End, is Ruby Rae Spiegel’s off-Broadway hit set in the girls’ locker room of a Florida high school. Forced Entertainment’s The Notebook goes to Battersea Arts Centre in south London. Green Ginger’s Outpost is at Jackson’s Lane in north London as part of the Suspense festival of puppetry, which is in venues all over the city this week with many enticing shows. Camden People’s Theatre’s Fitter Happier festival kicks off with Precious Cargo’s Into Thin Air and continues all week with contributions from Josh Coates, Urban Foxes Collective and more. Under the Bed, at the ARC in Stockton, is a dark fairytale about childhood trauma from the 154 Collective; it heads to the Theatre in the Mill in Bradford on Friday. Sam Holcroft’s take on Chekhov, Vanya, is at the Citizens in Glasgow. Simon Armitage’s Homer rewrite, The Odyssey: Missing Presumed Dead, takes up residence at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. Selina Thompson’s engaging and thoughtful Dark and Lovely considers what hair really means at Northern Stage in Newcastle. The Emerge festival at Warwick Arts Centre celebrates some of the extraordinary companies that are emerging from Warwick University, and will include performances from Dumbshow, Barrel Organ, Walrus and more.
Wednesday
There is lots of great stuff in the Spill performance festival this week, starting tonight with Robin Deacon’s White Balance at the Barbican, London, and finishing next Sunday with Heather Cassils’s Inextinguishable Fire at the National. Check out the full programme, which includes some fine work I’ve already seen, including Jamal Harwood’s The Privileged and Katy Baird’s Workshy. Battersea Arts Centre is where you need to be for a Deborah Pearson double bill that includes Like You Were Before and The Future Show. I’ve seen both and they are terrific. The centenary of the Clydeside rent strikes is commemorated in AJ Taudevin’s Mrs Barbour’s Daughters at the Tron theatre, Glasgow. Check out the Currency festival at the Place in London, which operates at the borders of dance, circus and performance. And if you can’t make it in person, check out the live streaming. The gorgeous Love Letters Straight from Your Heart is at the Continental in Preston tonight. And for one night only, Chris Goode’s Men in the Cities is at Cambridge Junction.
Thursday
Francesca Millican-Slater’s The Forensics of a Flat explores locality, loss and what home really means. It’s at the Pegasus in Oxford, tonight only. The performance series Sacred starts at the Chelsea theatre, London, with drag fabulist Dickie Beau’s Blackouts, in which he channels Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland. The Blue Sky festival at the Other Room in Cardiff features short plays from Joel Horwood, Morgan Lloyd Malcom, Alan Saunders and more. Red Cape are on tour with a new show, Be Brave and Leave for the Unknown, about a couple who lose a child; it’s at South Street Arts in Reading, tonight and tomorrow.
Friday and the weekend
I heard some songs from Grit, a new musical made with local young people by Doorstep Arts in Torbay, while I was at the Inspiring Curiosity conference last month. It sounded like a winner, and it is at the Palace theatre in Paignton tonight and tomorrow. Indeed, there is so much great youth theatre around. Liverpool’s 20 Stories High and Glasgow’s Junction 25 kick off the Chrysalis festival at the Traverse in Edinburgh tonight and continues tomorrow with work from Contact Young Company and the Citizens’ Young Company. Also tonight, Ira Brand asks that you Be Gentle With Me, as she considers notions of illness and health at Shoreditch Town Hall, London. Little Soldier’s hugely entertaining The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha will bring a smile to the North Wall in Oxford on Saturday night.
