Elliot Cowan and Madeleine Potter in The Internationalist at the Gate in London. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
Over the weekend I'm going to Nottingham to see DV8's latest show, which is heading out on tour before ending up at the National Theatre in the autumn. I'll also be catching up with Molora at the Pit, a South African version of Greek tragedy. I'm also off to Manchester to see Brenda Blethyn playing faded Southern belle Amanda Wingfield in Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie. While I'm there, I'm going to pop into the Green Room on Thursday night to see some work in progress by rising artists including Nic Green whose Cloudpiece I enjoyed at BAC.
Masque of the Red Death says goodbye to BAC on Saturday night and I'm already looking forward to the theatre's next Playground Project under its new joint artistic partnership of David Jubb and David Micklem, who is living proof that good things (and people) can come out of the Arts Council. I'll be heading to BAC later in the week to see My Life with the Dogs, the new one from NIE, the idiosyncratic company which also created My Long Journey Home.
If you've got children (and perhaps even if you haven't), I'd urge you top pop into Soho to see Cutlery Wars, James Campbell's wonderfully surreal and touching account of a dystopian future school system where nobody can progress in life until they've passed their year six tests. It's rough and ready, but also fiercely intelligent and it is great that Soho is giving it house room during the school holidays. It deserves a future.
I enjoyed The Internationalist at the Gate, not least because Natalie Abrahami's production gives it the emotional ballast that Anne Washburn's script might otherwise lack. Abrahami and her co-artistic director Carrie Cracknell are successfully reinventing the Gate. Later in the week, Cracknell is taking audiences out on the streets of Notting Hill for the Mark Ravenhill double bill, Armageddon and Women in Love .
You shouldn't miss Harper Regan, the latest from Simon Stephens whose Motortown was so brilliant. It's previewing at the Cottesloe from Wednesday. The RSC's Histories are in full swing at the Roundhouse, and the Arches theatre festival continues in Glasgow, where Black Watch has already touched down before heading for Warwick and London. In Bath you can catch up with Wish I Had a Sylvia Plath, a very clever look at female creativity and poetry.
It's easy to over look shows that have been around for a while: Kneehigh's Brief Encounter and The History Boys are worth your attention. Finally if you are anywhere near Liverpool then you must see One Step Forward, One Step Back, Dreamthinkspeaks's marvellous site responsive piece staged in Liverpool Cathedral. A little piece of paradise in a drab world.
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