Prolific playwright James Graham aspires to be nothing if not timely. His latest, a play about the Labour Party, was originally due to open during the week of that party’s conference, when our ears were once again ringing to the chant of “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn!” Unfortunately, the play’s TV star Sarah Lancashire had to pull out, so its West End opening was delayed until tonight.

In the 1960s, we had the theatre of commitment; today we have an attitude of non-committal. Once, political playwrights could be guaranteed to tell you what to think, to describe what was wrong with society – and what to do about it.

My friend, the playwright Robert Holman, says that the writing of a play is always “the product of a moment”. Of course, he’s right, but sometimes you have to pick your moment.

Location, location, location. Jim thinks he lives in the “shittiest” small town in Scotland. It’s Mallaig, on the west coast, and he’s a deeply troubled 32-year-old, working for a fish merchant and as a nature guide, but having no friends. His flat is tiny and messy, and it smells bad. Still, he enjoys his own company, and has a great collection of crustaceans in formaldehyde. It’s his hobby.

Jack Cardiff was one of the all-time greats of cinematography, the man who shot such Powell and Pressburger classics as The Red Shoes and A Matter of Life and Death, worked on John Huston’s The African Queen with Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, and lensed Marilyn Monroe in The Prince and the Showgirl. He was renowned as “the man who makes women look beautiful”, but despite this he didn’t shrink from shooting Sylvester Stallone in Rambo: First Blood (Part II).

As with life, so it is in art: in the same way that one can't predict the curve balls that get thrown our way, the American playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins defies categorisation. On the basis of barely a handful of plays, two of which happen now to be running concurrently in London, this 32-year-old Pulitzer prize finalist seems to embark upon a fresh path with each new venture.

Can the theatre be a courtroom? A good public place to debate morality and to arrive at profound decisions? You could answer this with a history lesson that ranges from the ancient Greeks to more recent tribunal plays in the 1960s and 1990s. But I’ll just concentrate on Ferdinand von Schirach’s Terror, which premiered simultaneously in Berlin and Frankfurt in 2015 and now gets a British outing at the Lyric Hammersmith.

Donald Trump’s electoral success was, we have been told, fuelled by the anger of the American working class. But how do you show that kind of anger on stage, and how do you criticise its basis in traditional masculinity?

The Bush is back! After a whole year of darkness, the West London new writing venue has reopened its doors following a £4.3million remodelling and refurb, a project close to the heart of its artistic director Madani Younis.

Michelle Collins, actor and TV presenter, is so strongly associated with her roles in EastEnders and Coronation Street that it is something of a shock to see her live on stage at the Park Theatre, and not behind a bar or in a snug.