National Theatre until 26 February 2012
What makes Juno and the Paycock a masterpiece is that even today it teaches us important lessons about Irish society that should have been learnt nearly a century ago. This tragi-comedy is the second play of Sean O'Casey's Dublin trilogy and was first performed in 1924. It's a grim tale of the Boyle family who live in a tenement in Dublin during the Irish Civil War that began in 1922.
When The Playboy of the Western World as first performed at the Abbey theatre in Dublin in 1907, it didn't go down well. In fact, it sparked a riot among the audience.
Set in the early 20th century, this darkly comic play explores the fascinations and frustrations of country life. It follows the fate of Christy Mahon, a runaway, who finds himself a guest at the pub belonging to Michael James Flaherty. By confessing to killing his father, he unexpectedly becomes hero of the local town, and the love interest of Flaherty's daughter Pegeen. Christy acts as a mirror for the people of the town, building his boastful stories upon their own desires, only to have them turn on him when he finally tries to live up to their ideal.
Neighbourhood Watch is veteran playwright Alan Ayckbourn's 75th play. It is a strongly political drama set in an upper middle class neighbourhood. The protagonists Martin and Hilda are siblings and new residents at Bluebell Hill, which overlooks a working class housing estate.
The siblings meet a few of the locals at their housewarming party. After Martin encounters a young boy, who he assumes to be trespassing through his garden, the pair decide to set up a Neighbourhood Watch group. When the group decide to go ahead without the involvement of any police officers, the previously quiet inhabitants of Bluebell Hill become vigilant and the play takes a darker turn.
Opposition to the cuts is so widespread that it was bound to find its way into the Edinburgh Fringe.
On 26 March around half a million marched in London against the cuts. What happened that day to a classical bassoon player and hundreds of protesters in a store in Oxford Street is the subject of the extremely funny show, Ben Brailsford: My Fortnum & Mason Hell.
The plot of Chekhov's classic 1903 play is uncomplicated. An indebted Russian gentry family face having to sell their estate, including a cherry orchard. In the end they sell the land where their family has lived for generations to Lopakhin, a merchant, and leave.
What makes the play a classic - and what this production makes clear - is the meaning of these events for the family, their servants and hangers-on and for Lopakhin himself, in the context of the Russian society of the time.
National Theatre
Until 21 June
Clifford Odets is rightly celebrated for his earlier overtly political plays Waiting for Lefty and Awake and Sing! Rocket to the Moon, which premiered in 1938, is a more innocuous creation, centring as it does on a somewhat hapless married New York dentist, his wife, her father, and the young dental assistant and aspiring dancer who excites his desire and causes him to muse on his thwarted ambitions.
Mark Thomas
On tour
This two and a half hour show is about comedian Mark Thomas's attempt to walk the entire length of the Israeli barrier in the West Bank, using the wall as a route map.
If you had asked Thomas what he was doing in Israel, he would have responded that he was writing a book "about birds and flowers". This was the line used to placate Israeli soldiers en route.
Royal Court Theatre, until 19 March
The Heretic by Richard Bean centres on Dr Diane Cassell, a specialist in sea levels, whose observations lead her to question anthropogenic climate change. As its title suggests, the play argues that belief in climate change is a religion, whereas scientists "don't believe in anything".
Until 2 April 2011, Arts Theatre West End, London
Woody Sez could be categorised as a jukebox musical. But, unlike We Will Rock You or Mamma Mia, there's no glitz or glamour. Refreshingly, there are no microphones or belting voices, just the intimate experience of four musicians messing about on a dozen or so instruments and singing through the hard times of the life of Woody Guthrie.
