Everybody’s been talking about Everybody’s Talking About Jamie since its Sheffield Crucible debut earlier this year. It’s unusual to see a musical come steaming into the West End based on word on mouth – not star casting, or association with an existing franchise.

War is morally acidic: it dissolves social rules, loosens inhibitions and gives permission to men to behave like animals. And the people who have to put up with this deluge of amorality and abuse are, of course, women.

During the 19^th century, Tiger Bay in Cardiff was the beating heart of the Industrial Revolution and the most multicultural area in Britain. Visit today and the only signs remaining are the odd gothic buildings that sit between Doctor Who exhibitions and Nandos. The Wales Millennium Centre looks to remind Wales of its history with the debut of an original production, appropriately titled Tiger Bay.

Outrage knows no time barrier, as the world at large reminds us on a daily basis. So what better moment for the National Theatre to fashion for the internet age a stage adaptation of Network, the much-laureled 1976 celluloid satire about lunacy and, yes, anger in the televisual age.

Should Brexit ministers need help understanding the cultural mindset of their continental counterparts, they might consider a subscription to the Orange Tree, the compact Richmond producing house that is defiantly opening its arms to Europe.

American classics dominate the straight plays in London’s West End. Whenever a producer wants to revive a straight drama, they will inevitably look first at the back catalogue of Tennessee Williams or Arthur Miller or, in this case, David Mamet.

One of the questions that can be asked of Brecht is whether for a modern audience his Verfremdungseffekt — or alienation effect — still works as intended, provoking genuine reflections on justice by distancing audiences from emotional entanglement with the characters. At a time when verbatim and community theatre is accomplishing just that with exactitude and force, it appears that inducing audiences to think morally is most effective when delivered in unexpected ways.

Is Buddhism a path to finding spiritual enlightenment – or just an excuse for not facing your personal problems? Given that this question is implicit in the debut play by Sam Bain, script co-writer of nine series of Channel 4’s Peep Show, as well as having other credits on Fresh Meat, Babylon and Four Lions, you’d expect the answer to be the latter. And you wouldn’t be wrong.

Harry Potter has a lot to answer for. The phenomenal success of JK Rowling’s books, and of their film versions, and of the stage play (now set to remain in the West End for all eternity), has created a template of extravagant cultural impact that must still be bewitching prospective authors of the next big thing, as well as their prospective publishers and prospective readers.

It’s all a bit Dairy Milk. That was, to wrap it in purple foil, the critical reaction to Les émotifs anonymes when it was released in 2011. Not in the UK, though, where Jean-Pierre Améris’s romantic comedy never made it to cinemas.