Reaching for the moon ... Laura Cubitt in Brilliant at Polka theatre for children. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
It used to be the case that the entire theatre world decamped to Edinburgh in August. Now they all go to Latitude in July. I'm off there too this weekend where I'll be catching as many shows as I can from a terrific lineup of theatres and companies including the Royal Court, the Bush, Paines Plough and the RSC amongst others. I'll be reporting back in the arts pages next week about whether camping and theatre is a good combination.
Elsewhere you might think that this coming week it might be pretty thin pickings, given the time of the year. But actually there's a lot going on, including Alan Ayckbourn premiering his 71st play - Life and Beth - in Scarborough, the Peter Hall season which is in full swing in Bath and the 24/7 festival of new writing in non-theatre venues in Manchester. Mike Kenny's adaptation of The Railway Children played in the National Railway Museum in York looks as if it could be fun too, and features a real steam engine. If you are in Edinburgh, you can steal a march on the rest of us by seeing a preview of Fall, a new play written by Zinnie Harris and directed by the Traverse's new artistic director, Dominic Hill.
In London, Fevered Sleep's Brilliant - intended for three and four year olds but essential viewing for anyone interested in theatre - is a thing of wonder. Why can't more children's theatre be like this - mysterious, unknowable and open-ended? A great deal of theatre for children is just not good enough, because it doesn't take risks, something that may well come up at the Action on Children's Arts conference at the Unicorn on Monday. Also in London Katie Mitchell's ...some trace of her starts previewing at the National, as do Clare Higgins and Simon Russell Beale in A Slight Ache. This year's JMK award winner, Michael Oakley, directs Marlowe's Edward II at BAC and Gob Squad's Kitchen is at Soho. The 50th anniversary tour of West Side Story is at Sadlers Wells and then coming to a theatre near you later in the year, and David Eldridge's Under the Blue Sky opens at the Duke of York's on Friday. If you are down by the National on Tuesday around 5.30, look out for Dot Comedy's The Peter and Jane Family, a live recreation of the 1950s Ladybird first readers. It's part of the excellent free Watch This Space summer season.
