What ought to be a featherweight holiday confection emerges as a charmless slog in the belated West End bow of White Christmas, a title that at this point in November may induce panic in those playgoers who haven't begun to think about holiday shopping. But even the more industrious gift-givers out there will have a hard time stomaching a hefty slab of seasonal treacle, which is nicely designed (and brilliantly played by musical director Andrew Corchoran's ace orchestra) but suffers from a hole at its very centre.

Meet Len (Graham O'Mara), a man-child stuck in a world where "gaytard", "bender" and "spastic" are (to him, anyway) harmless insults. He throws them lovingly at niece Jen (Jennifer Clement) to help cheer her up as she struggles to deal with the suicide of her father, who also happens to have been Len's more widely-known brother. As you might imagine, Len's counselling tactics strike a dull note with his 19-year-old niece, but nothing that a couple of cans of cider, Stuart Slade's gently witty writing and some fine performances can't put right. 

How can you convey the sheer incomprehensibility of ghastly acts? While most playwrights, when confronted by the horrors of genocide, settle for a journalistic approach that is realistic and documentary, a brave handful of writers take a less well-trodden path. They explore the terrain of trauma by using their imaginations: they are not so much photographers as painters — and their visionary abstractions are often more emotionally truthful than the formulaic coverage produced by news programmes.

Earlier this year two giant puppets, plus a bottom (lower case, human) on wheels, dominated Shakespeare’s dream play at the Barbican. Replace the bottom with an ever-present little dog and you might think we’re back more or less where we started nine months ago.

This venue’s current programming is devoted to examining the state of Britain’s public services, with a revival of Nina Raine’s Tiger Country, about the NHS, coming next month and, playing now, Roy Williams’s Wildefire, about the police. This play about cops and corruption stars Lorraine Stanley, whose “previous” includes films such as Gangster Number One, He Kills Coppers and The Hooligan Factory. She would also like us to take into account her stints in Waking the Dead and Trial and Retribution.

This time of remembrance has inspired a fascinating theatrical skirmish. In one corner, Nicholas Wright’s 2014 Regeneration, an adaptation of Pat Barker’s trilogy; in the other, Stephen MacDonald’s 1982 two-hander Not About Heroes. Both plays, currently touring, concern the pivotal meeting of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon at Edinburgh’s Craiglockhart War Hospital in 1917, but while the former examines shell shock and its treatment in compelling detail, the latter is content to place the poets and their enduring creations centre stage.

Is the Rose Playhouse London theatre’s best-kept secret? Or simply its worst-publicised? Either way, this gem of a space, tucked away behind the Globe in Bankside, needs and deserves a greater following. If it continues to stage shows like the delicately beautiful Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang however, it’ll be an easy sell. Gentle and melancholic, inventive and profoundly moving – this is a show with a particular autumnal alchemy to it.

There’s no denying that this one-woman show, starring Tricia Kelly, is mightily ambitious. Written by East German playwright Manfred Karge and rarely revived, Man to Man depicts a German widow – Ella Gericke – who decides to impersonate her dead husband, Max, and take over his life. The play opens with Hitler’s army advancing, spans 50 years, covers dozens of characters and includes a number of surreal dance, dream and fantasy sequences. Demanding indeed – but a bit of a mess.

When science and the arts combine they form a new genre, which has the unlovely name of “artsci”. But although there have now been several plays about climate change in recent years, can an innovative partnership between a playwright, a scientist and a director throw any more light on a subject — global warming — that is vital, yet seems to leave most people cold. More tellingly, can theatre tell us anything about it that we don’t already know?

A significant milestone was passed this week: Tuesday 4 November was Equal Pay Day. From that day until the end of the year, the average woman in this country effectively works for free compared to her male counterpart, such is the disparity in wages. And in case you were wondering, it’s getting worse, not better. The moment arrived three days earlier this year than last.