Seven days on stage

First it was a cult movie. Then it became a Broadway hit. Now, Hairspray has reached the West End. On the Guardian arts blog, Matt Wolf wondered whether the quirky musical would end an ill-fated run of productions at London's Shaftesbury Theatre. Michael Billington found the cast in fine form on press night, dishing out four stars in his review. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

Michael Ball slips into a dress to play the mother of a dance-crazed teen in Hairspray. 'I saw this show on Broadway four years ago,' Ball told Maddy Costa in the Guardian. 'I have never seen a part I have wanted to play more, and a part I'm less likely to be offered.' Photograph: Tristram Kenton

In London, Sadler's Wells hosted an evening of magic and mystery from James Thiérrée: circus performer, director and grandson of Charlie Chaplin. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

Lyn Gardner enjoyed James Thiérrée's show, Au Revoir Parapluie: 'No amount of programme notes can prepare you for an experience that is like being locked inside someone else's dream, or indeed nightmare.' Photograph: Tristram Kenton

At the Barbican, Splintergroup's Roadkill proved an unusual dance piece. It follows three people who run into trouble in the Australian outback. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

'The three dancers of Splintergroup are fearless in creating the illusion of violence,' wrote Judith Mackrell, before concluding that the 'lurid terrors so ingeniously evoked get lost in a fog of worthily choreographed tedium'. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

At Edinburgh's Traverse, Mark Fisher found Iain Finlay MacLeod's The Pearlfisher to be 'full of incident - from murder and childbirth to punishment beatings'. But Fisher also felt the piece was short on dramatic momentum. Photograph: Richard Campbell

Moss Hart and George S Kaufman's screwball comedy You Can't Take it With You opened at London's Southwark Playhouse this week. 'It is like a US Hay Fever but without Coward's barbed wit,' thought Lyn Gardner. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

John Godber's Hull Truck theatre company remains best known for lively comedies, but their latest offering examines the plight of women sold into the sex trade in Britain. Sold stars Kasia Halpin as a Moldovan woman forced to work as a prostitute in London, and Joshua Richards as a journalist who wants to hear her story. Photograph: PR

Peter Weiss's The Investigation, an account of the Frankfurt war crimes trial, has arrived at the Young Vic in a production directed by Dorcy Rugamba, drawing parallels with the genocide in Rwanda. Michael Billington found it a potent example of verbatim theatre with a 'shattering power'. Photograph: Tristram Kenton