Ex-People Show member Mike Figgis provides the music as his old company bows out, with Ghost Sonata. Photograph: Martin Argles
It's another good week if you live out of London. Grid Iron's Yarn, a collaboration with Dundee Rep, begins at the Verdant works in the city, spinning tales in the old jute factory and examining the personal and political, the local and the global, significance of clothes. The big guns are out in Scotland this week as Theatre Babel premieres Educating Agnes, Liz Lochhead's new version of Moliere's School for Wives at the Citizens in Glasgow and the Traverse in Edinburgh stages a new part of John Byrne's much loved Slab Boys story that moves the narrative on 30 years to the start of the 21st century.
Further South in Newcastle, Erica Whyman's production of A Doll's House relocates the action to the 1950s. In Leeds Ian Brown is directing the latest from Steve Walters, Fast Labour, which looks at the lives of asylum seekers in the UK and the growing culture of human exploitation. You should definitely head to Liverpool to see Dreamthinkspeak's One Step Forward One Step Back which takes you on a physical and spiritual journey around the city's Anglican cathedral.
While you are there you can bid a last farewell to one of the UK's oldest companies, The People Show, one of the victims of the recent Arts Council cuts. The company is going out in style with Josette Bushell-Mingo directing a promenade version of Strindberg's play Ghost Sonata in the exquisitely restored Victorian Palm House in Sefton Park. Founder members of the company Mark Long and George Khan are performing along side a community cast and choir of hundreds and the music is by former company member, Mike Figgis. Unmissable.
David Harrower's Blackbird stops off at Oxford Playhouse this week, and on Thursday DV8 calls in at the Sherman in Cardiff with To Be Straight with You, a passionate verbatim dance theatre piece about religion and homophobia. The Arab and the Jew is at the Drum in Plymouth, and don't forget Jonathan Miller's fine Hamlet at the Tobacco Factory in Bristol and Touched at Salisbury Playhouse.
In London, it's your very last chance to see The History Boys which finishes on the 26th, or you can be the first to see Dominic Dromgoole's production of King Lear which opens this year's Globe season. David Calder plays the lead. Brief Encounter is great fun and knee trembling too.
The Internationalist at the Gate is slippery stuff ratcheted up a notch by Natalie Abrahami's terrific production and if you've got a day to spare you can see Shared Experience's War and Peace at Hampstead. Oh and don't forget David Hoyle's Magazine on Tuesday night at the Vauxhall Tavern, Julian Fox's slight and idiosyncratically deadpan You've Got to Love Dancing to Stick to It at Soho and David Gale's Peachy Coochy night in the bar at Toynbee Studios on Thursday.
