“It takes a star to parody one,” wrote theartsdesk’s Edward Seckerson, nailing the essence of this immortal spoof-fest’s last incarnation at the Menier Chocolate Factory. Star quality was assured given the presence of Damian Humbley, peerless in Merrily We Roll Along and even the unjustly short-lived Lend Me a Tenor, who’s in this transfer.

Prince Charles’s “black spider letters” - his attempts to influence or change government policy - are real, as is the government’s long collusion with Clarence House to keep them from the public, despite the efforts of The Guardian in particular to expose them. This gives Mike Bartlett’s play King Charles III, an imagining of the next king becoming a champion of press freedom, a sharply ironic edge deep below its already very entertaining satire.

If Chiltern Firehouse is any indication, power in our society lies not in bank balance, postcode or job title, but in being seen nibbling crab doughnuts at the hottest restaurant in town. Becky Mode’s merciless skewering of that particular ego trip first delighted the discerning palates of Menier Chocolate Factory audiences in 2004 and makes a welcome return for the theatre’s 10^th anniversary, now directed by original star and creative collaborator Mark Setlock.

Time doesn’t take any of the edge off Sam Shepard’s rollicking reflection on the dichotomy of America, the tussle between the myth and the dream, represented by two warring brothers trapped with an idea for a bad film in a sweltering California condominium. Written in 1980, it’s still brilliantly strange, raucously funny, rippling with resonance.

There is a moment in Breeders when Ben Ockrent appears to be channelling Dennis Kelly’s chilling Utopia. Never mind the topical issue of homosexual parenting – should we even have children at all? Surely, argues Jemima Rooper’s eco-warrior Sharon, we would simply be bringing more people into a world that we have all but destroyed? Ockrent toys with that arresting darkness, before dismissing it in another droll one-liner. Sharon is really covering other insecurities; of course we should all cherish the desire to procreate.

There are 15 characters in Robert McLellan's quirky 1948 comedy, but the star is the language most of them speak. To mark the referendum later this month, the Finborough is mounting a season of Scottish work, including a trio of classics, under the title "Scotland Decides 2014/Tha Alba A'Taghadh 2014". While the linguistic medium of The Flouers o'Edinburgh is more accessible than this might suggest - Scots rather than Gaelic - it nevertheless requires a Southerner to make some effort to tune in.



It begins sombrely, with the grave recounting of a shipwreck, but such emotive moments are fleeting: as the drama ratchets up, it only serves to fuel the splendid zaniness of Shakespeare's 1594 farce. Granted, it's not his most nuanced comedy – the wordplay is relatively unsophisticated, and there’s a greater reliance on confusion, pratfalls and repetition – yet in Blanche McIntyre’s spirited production, it is, indisputably, an awful lot of fun.

Dramatic national events such as riots tend to attract verbatim theatre practitioners like smashed shop windows attract looters. In this new play, Alecky Blythe – who specialises in recording ordinary people and editing their words into a humane story – takes to the streets to see what people were saying during the English riots of summer 2011. The main problem at the outset is that citizens armed with new digital media have already filmed and recorded memorable scenes from these events. So does Blythe have anything to add to what we already know?

Richard Bean has had a busy year, and it isn’t over yet. Great Britain, his bawdy play about press ethics and police corruption, is transferring to the West End after hitting the spot at the National. Pitcairn, a new piece about the aftermath of the mutiny on the Bounty, will shortly arrive at the Globe after turning heads at the Chichester Theatre. And Made in Dagenham, a musical version of the 2010 film for which Bean has provided the book, looks likely to be one of the West End highlights of the autumn.

Here's a fun fact: this year the Merriam-Webster dictionary added a new definition for the noun "catfish". As well as the amphibian, a catfish now also refers to "a person who sets up a false personal profile on a social networking site for fraudulent or deceptive purposes." Having been popularised by the 2010 American film documentary of the same name, the term is also used casually as a verb, meaning to fool someone online.