The Manipulate festival in Scotland has surreal square dances, puppetry without puppets and jaw-dropping human landscapesIn between shows at the Manipulate festival, a veteran arts producer …
Derby theatreSabrina Mahfouz has impressively distilled the inspired novel about a world where the power rests with the black populationAt the heart of Malorie Blackman's young adult novel i…
Hull TruckDementia drama and Jacobean bloodbath sit uneasily alongside each other in a reworking of King Lear during the fishing industry's dying daysThey're a hard-bitten lot, the Lear sist…
The national theatres of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland have all caused a stir about what they represent. How should they reflect a country's identity?They had Richard Eyre on the radi…
New Vic, Newcastle-under-LymeAn immersive show for the under-fives strikes gold and acts as a primer for Peter Leslie Wild's inventive and boisterous main stage productionAs is often the cas…
Hull TruckA sumptuous choral score is key to this slick, polished production featuring an impressive female Fagin and tightly drilled young companyThe statistics about the working poor in Th…
From Victorian penury to Caribbean party music, new productions at Leeds Playhouse and Northern Stage in Newcastle revisit Dickens's festive favouriteIt isn't only the ghosts of Christmases …
Traverse, EdinburghKieran Hurley's gripping Edinburgh-set two-hander confronts the economic divide in the city and the stranglehold the middle-classes have on the artsKieran Hurley's provoca…
Pantomime legend Johnny McKnight does his usual festive double, starring in Mammy Goose at the Tron in Glasgow " and writing Sleepin' Cutie at Macrobert, StirlingIs pantomime a reactionary f…
Royal Lyceum, EdinburghElla Hickson's adaptation of JM Barrie's story is a funny and heartbreaking coming-of-age tale for its swashbuckling heroinePeter Pan is as much a concept as a charact…
Theatre Royal, NewcastlePlacing the story in the context of two rival circuses, Michael Harrison's show boasts jugglers, skaters and motorcyclistsIf you want the secret behind the UK's faste…
Live theatre, NewcastlePlaying themselves with humour, grace and honesty, a former inmate and her daughter tell their story and reveal their bond Cheryl and Abigail Byron are on adjacent cha…
Coliseum, OldhamKevin Shaw's colourful panto is an enjoyable sugar rush seemingly powered by E-numbersFine Time Fontayne and Simeon Truby make their first entrance as the Ugly Sisters wearin…
Cast, Doncaster Anna Jordan tunes into intertwined lives and captures the oblivion and camaraderie of the dancefloor in her new dramaIt's no spoiler to reveal that Pop Music ends with Come O…
Northern Stage, NewcastleStaged in the round, Elayce Ismail's production relocates Dylan Thomas's dramatic poem about the people of Llareggub In divided times, there's something comforting a…
Live theatre, Newcastle Edgar Allen Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher is restaged in a Tyneside mental hospital in a poignant and politically charged musicalIt sounds like a challenge for…
Traverse, EdinburghAnna Jordan's four-hander for Frantic Assembly, unfolding across time to tell parallel war stories, is performed with heart and focusA man is trying to cross the sea to hi…
Unity, LiverpoolDeparting from convention and reality, Leo Butler's simulated psychedelic experience crashes around with jolly abandonYou can imagine an Open University programme that sets o…
Royal Exchange, ManchesterSarah Frankcom gives Arthur Miller's decline-and-fall drama an extra edge in this powerful productionDon Warrington's Willy Loman is at the centre of his own univer…
Traverse, EdinburghClare Duffy's play skirts the big issues as an ecowarrior and her mother clash in a locked bathroom Opening in the week the UN has made dire warnings about climate change,…
Theatr Clwyd, MoldWilliam Golding's fable of desert-island anarchy is reinvented for the modern age in Emma Jordan's brutal, bold productionThere's a theory being pushed by the psychologist …
Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh With 50/50 gender-split casting, this comedy of disguise and identity enjoys a playful makeoverYou get a sense of the playfulness of Wils Wilson's trippy take on Shak…
Tramway, Glasgow The thwarted lover story, retold in dazzling Glaswegian Scots, has raucous spirit and flamboyant hairpieces but its verbal flourishes are lost in acoustic fogEdwin Morgan's …
Victoria and Albert Museum, LondonA brutal score by Jerskin Fendrix is the driving force behind this bleakly topical reworking of Alfred Jarry's Ubu RoiSince its premiere in 1896, Alfred Jar…
Royal Lyceum, EdinburghA man sits outside a prison in self-imposed punishment, in this philosophically provocative but dramatically inert dramaThe set is not a million miles from Druid Theat…