Max is big and black and Tyler is slight and (very) white, an odd couple trapped in a dual-control car as Max barks out his instructions and Tyler prepares for his driving test. If their relationship is to get started, like the clutch of the Vauxhall Corsa, it’s going to have to find its biting point. When the men reveal a little more of their insecurities, it does and we’re away.

A tender love story has arrived at the Kings Head theatre from the US, where its author, Tanya Barfield, is an award-winning playwright for both television and theatre. The plot is simple: two women — one white, one Black — meet in an office where one is a supervisor, the other a science teacher turned temp, and their lives become entwined over the next 25 years.

The Last Return, Traverse Theatre ★★★★★

Music plays a big part in the life of Dwight, an 11-year-old black lad growing up in early 80s Leeds. He doesn't fit in at school, bullied because he is "slow", and he doesn't fit in outside school, would-be friends losing patience with him.

But he does fit in at home, loved unequivocally by a protective mother, somewhat enviously by a bickering sister, and rather reluctantly by a preoccupied father. Like the records he plays on the gramophone, his life is about to spin – and he'll have to hold on to the warmth of family love in a cold world.

Slamming the door on experience comes with repercussions in A Doll's House, Part 2, the thrilling Broadway entry from American writer Lucas Hnath that has arrived at the Donmar as part of an America-friendly season at that address including Marys Seacole (already finished) and The Band's Visit (still to come).

When Bliss, a new play adapted from an Andrei Platonov short story by Fraser Grace, made its debut in Russia in early 2020, Cambridge-based company Menagerie were told that their production was “very Russian”.

The psychology of female desire in 1960s California, was a field awash with voyeurism and exploitation. This brilliant play uncovers not only the bizarre story of Gloria Szymanski, but catholic hypocrisy and everyday sexism too, with a nod to third wave feminism.

“We all make history, one way or another.” But some of us make more history than others, and a group of 27 English schoolboys who got lost in Southern Germany in 1936 haven’t made much, unfortunately.

Inspiration jostles irritation in Marys Seacole, Jackie Sibblies Drury's Off Broadway hit from 2019 that has arrived at the Donmar as part of a banner season of late for Black American writing in the capital (cf. "Daddy": A Melodrama at the Almeida and Is God Is last year at the Royal Court).

The Breach is a coming of age story and an age-in-the-making story. The play takes place in the U.S. in the 1970s and 1990s, switching back and forth between teenagers in Louisville and their older selves 15 years later. The promise of the 1970s in the US (and UK) when inequality was actively being reduced, and the undoing of that potential, are played out amongst this group of young friends.