Theatre
1 While We’re Here
Carol and Eddie are former lovers whose paths cross 20 years after their affair ended. Life has not been kind to either of them, but can they rescue each other and find happiness? Barney Norris’s two-hander is a mini-Chekhovian tragicomedy set on the south coast that charts lives bounded by sea and land and also by fear and loneliness. Tessa Peake-Jones and Andrew French are both terrific as the couple who dance around each other in an unassuming but quietly emotional play.
The Bush Theatre, W12, to 27 May
2 Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour
Pitching up in the West End in all its rowdy glory, Vicky Featherstone’s lively production gives fizz and spark to Lee Hall’s stage version of the Alan Warner novel The Sopranos. Six teenagers from an all-girls Catholic school in Oban are on a trip to the Scottish capital for a choir competition, but they are no angels. Full of sex, swearing and, most gloriously, singing, this is an infectiously high-spirited account of chaotic lives full of tragedy and trauma.
The Duke of York’s Theatre, WC2, to 2 September
3 The Goat, Or Who Is Sylvia?
Edward Albee is enjoying posthumous success in the West End with the carnage of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and this cooler dissection of marital woe. Damian Lewis is Martin, a man who has fallen in love with a goat, much to the dismay of his wife, played by Sophie Okonedo. It’s not a masterpiece like Virginia Woolf, but it is a fascinating exploration of the limits of tolerance and sexual and social taboos.
Theatre Royal Haymarket, SW1, to 24 June
4 Twelfth Night
Jo Davies’s joyful and heartbreaking revival really mines Twelfth Night’s gender-bending eroticism. It’s a beguilingly comic and yet melancholic evening that offers a nod to the plight of refugees tossed hither and thither like Viola on the unforgiving sea of life.
Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, to 20 May
5 Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
More Albee – and this one is the play that made his reputation and will preserve it for many years to come. Not that this drunken and vicious night to remember, played out between the battling George and Martha in their house on a college campus, is in anyway a jolly evening out; it’s more like witnessing a car crash in slow motion. Its success rides on two great performances; it gets them here from Imelda Staunton and Conleth Hill, who achieve the tricky feat of making the couple monstrous but desolate, too.
The Harold Pinter Theatre, SW1, to 27 May
Dance
1 Birmingham Royal Ballet
The final week of BRB’s annual north-south tours. The latter is a Shakespeare-themed programme that features José Limón’s moving The Moor’s Pavane; the former brings a mixed bill of ballets, including Kenneth MacMillan’s witty Solitaire.
Truro and York, 13 May; Nottingham, 16-17 May
2 Rambert
A long-overdue new work from the deliciously maverick Aletta Collins joins Christopher Bruce’s classic Ghost Dances and Didy Veldman’s The 3 Dancers.
Sadler’s Wells, EC1, 16-20 May
3 Royal Ballet
Liam Scarlett’s new ballet is premiered alongside works by George Balanchine, William Forsythe and Christopher Wheeldon.
Royal Opera House, WC2, 18-31 May
