Tough Time, Nice Time, Crewe/Birmingham
Don't rush to this if you want a jolly night out, but do if you want to be challenged and engage with life at its most bleak and most funny. Don't see this if you like a narrative that moves from A to Z with no diversions, but do see it if you are interested in theatre that explores the failure of storytelling. Ridiculusmus is no ordinary company, and this gruelling two-hander, set in the sauna of a Bangkok spa, features two repulsive naked German men, an apparent rent boy turned lawyer and a jaded journalist, who swap stories of sex, celebrity and genocide. But who, if anyone, is telling the truth and what happens to our humanity when our stories fail us?
Axis Arts Centre, Crewe, Tue; The Door, Birmingham Rep, Wed to 7 Nov
Lyn Gardner
Everyman, Taunton
Everyman, dating from an unknown time in the late 15th or early 16th century and written by an unknown author, is one of the best surviving examples of the Morality plays, the allegorical dramas popular in medieval Europe which featured the personified vices and virtues in a constant struggle for the soul of man, in this case Everyman, who finally learns that he will reap what he has sowed. This production by Cornwall's international theatre project, Tangle, has a new musical score and gives the story a modern twist with song and dance performed by a cast of African and Caribbean actors.
Brewhouse, Wed to 14 Nov
Lyn Gardner
The Kreutzer Sonata, London
The Kreutzer Sonata was written in 1889, at a stage in Tolstoy's life when he was becoming increasingly religious, and not a little mysogynistic. A tale of jealousy and murder, it was censored and led Theodore Roosevelt to label the great Russian writer a "sexual moral pervert". The central character is Pozdnyshev, who tells fellow train passengers how he killed his wife after she played the eponymous Beethoven sonata with her violinist lover. Tolstoy always hoped the piece would be performed with the music; now the Gate does so in a new adaptation by Nancy Harris.
Gate Theatre, W11, Thu to 5 Dec
Mark Cook
Uncle Vanya, Bristol
A co-production between the Tobacco Factory and BOV, this marks the first time that Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory has staged a show at the King Street theatre. It signifies the new spirit of cooperation on the Bristol theatre scene, so it had better be good! The omens are terrific with director Andrew Hilton, whose plain Shakespeare productions have been such a pleasure over the last 10 years, already having cut his teeth on Chekhov with a very fine Three Sisters that was far funnier and more gloriously human than most. Uncle Vanya may be the most heartbreaking of all Chekhov's play, but its wry look at the foibles and self-deceptions of humanity makes it heartbreakingly funny, too, in the right hands.
Bristol Old Vic, to 21 Nov
Lyn Gardner
Mrs Warren's Profession, On tour
Heading out on a big regional tour before looking for a West End berth, Michael Rudman directs Felicity Kendal as the mother who has done everything to ensure that her daughter, Vivie, will have an education, respectability and a comfortable life. Vivie has always been happy with her life, but as she reaches maturity she begins to question it, and when she discovers where the money she is living on came from, the relationship between mother and daughter faces its sternest test. If there is one Bernard Shaw work that deserves repeated views, it's this slippery and engaging drama of morality, a play that Shaw himself liked above all his many others. Even today the conundrum at its heart holds true, and it has two blistering roles for women.
Theatre Royal, Bath, Sat; The Lowry, Salford, Mon to 7 Nov
Lyn Gardner
The Entertainer, Manchester
It is almost impossible to think of John Osborne's 1957 play without an image of Laurence Olivier as Archie Rice flashing into your mind. Nobody since has quite made the role so much their own, and Olivier's ghost haunts any production of the classic, just as the ghost of past glories and Empire haunt Osborne's sardonic play, in which little old England is a clapped out, end of a the pier show, and Archie himself a third-rate music hall artiste and leftover from a lost age. The latest actor to climb this mountain of a role is David Schofield (pictured), who returns to the Royal Exchange Theatre for the first time for 17 years. Roberta Taylor and David Ryall as Archie's wife and father also join the cast under director Greg Hersov, who had a previous notable Osborne success with a revival of Look Back In Anger, starring Michael Sheen, which transferred from Manchester to the NT.
Royal Exchange Theatre, Wed to 5 Dec
Lyn Gardner
The Habit Of Art, London
History is repeating itself on the South Bank as Alan Bennett, Nicholas Hytner, Richard Griffiths and Frances de la Tour are reunited for probably the most eagerly anticipated play of the year. They, of course, were all involved in the all-conquering The History Boys. Now Hytner is to direct Bennett's latest, The Habit Of Art, which imagines a meeting of poet WH Auden and composer Benjamin Britten 25 years after their previous collaboration. Britten, played by Alex Jennings, has just written Death In Venice, and comes to Auden (Griffiths) for advice. As the two quirky, cranky men are interrupted by a future biographer and a rent boy, Bennett's play reflects on desire, getting old, creativity and inspiration.
Lyttelton Theatre, SE1, Thu to 24 Jan
Mark Cook
Ghosts, Bolton
David Thacker has just had a big hit with one story of family secrets and lies, and now here he is with another. Swapping Arthur Miller's All My Sons for Ibsen's Ghosts, Thacker continues a theme in a production that relocates the play from Norway to Lancashire in the late 19th century. Here Oswald, an artist, returns home for the first time for many years to the house where his widowed mother is building a memorial to his dead father. But as long buried secrets are unearthed, it becomes clear that respectability has been built on shaky foundations.
Octagon, to 21 Nov
Lyn Gardner