Spies are basically actors. They create fake personas in order to achieve their ends. But the difference is that they do this 24/7. All the time. Especially during a secret operation. So the first thing to say about David Eldridge’s adaptation of John Le Carré’s 1963 classic, which first opened at the Chichester Festival Theatre last year, is that it offers the strange joy of watching actors playing characters who are themselves acting a role.

Hail the spirit of the dance. And of acting. And of driving and flying. At a time when new writing is clearly in decline, and the most successful shows are adaptations or revivals of the classics, the National Theatre returns to one of its big hits from a year ago, thrillingly recast. Unsurprisingly, it’s an adaptation of a popular book of yesteryear: Kendall Feaver’s version of Ballet Shoes, Noel Streatfeild’s classic 1936 coming-of-age novel about three adopted sisters who go to drama school. 

Don't be fooled by the shambling geniality which first defines Bryan Cranston's Joe Keller at the start of the Belgian director Ivo van Hove's scorching revival of All My Sons. By the time we get to the interval-free finish, some 2-1/4 hours later, this seemingly affable chap will be as done in as the tree we see toppled in the production's wordless prologue. 

Over the past few years, the National Theatre has specialised in trilogies. End is the final play in both playwright David Eldridge’s outstanding trilogy and in this venue’s former director Rufus Norris’s Dorfman programme. Like Roy Williams and Clint Dyer’s Death of England trilogy, Eldridge’s cycle – Beginning (2017) and Middle (2022) – says as much about the state of the nation as it does about the personal lives of its characters.

Obsession makes for good drama. Looking back over 30 years of in-yer-face theatre in general and female monologues in particular – anything from Fleabag to Superhoe – I’m struck by the power of the individual voice to take us on journeys into the underworlds of extreme feelings. Dark places; dark thoughts; darkness visible. So Tanya-Loretta Dee’s debut play, Loop, which she performs herself, starts with a very promising premise.

Did you know that women watch porn? That they wank? Shock. Horror. Dismay. If you really are surprised by this non-revelation then maybe you need to get a ticket to see Sophia Chetin-Leuner’s Porn Play at the Royal Court’s studio space. But, wait a minute, it’s sold out already. Maybe because it stars Ambika Mod (remember her from Every Brilliant Thing @Sohoplace, or Netflix’s One Day?).

New writing for the theatre is good at taking us into the darkest of places – and there are few more painful environments than prisons and mental institutions. Places where agony radiates off the walls, and anguish is in the air we breathe. So it’s a real challenge for Sophia Griffin, in her debut play, After Sunday, at the Bush theatre, to takes us on just such a journey into an unforgiving world of distress, disappointment and despair.

Hamilton may have helped the West End recover from The Covid Years, but it carries its share of blame too. Perhaps that’s not strictly fair on some of its spawn, but do we get Coven without that musical behemoth?

As a proposition, this production raises the immediate questions how, and why? While Suzanne Collins’s young adult series of books were logically and successfully adapted for the screen, a futuristic tale involving glittering cities and gladiatorial battles across vast natural terrain hardly seems possible, or even necessary for theatre.