It seems only too fitting that David Lan’s luminous reign at the Young Vic should draw to a close with this bold, creatively thrilling international import.

The dad who lives off-grid with his offspring is becoming a regular visitor to cinema screens. He was last seen in the guise of Viggo Mortensen in Captain Fantastic, the story of the father whose seven-strong brood must learn to come out of the forest and live in society. The latest telling is Leave No Trace, in which a military veteran Will (Ben Foster, pictured below) and his 13-year-old daughter Tom (Thomasin McKenzie) have been camping, apparently for years, in the woods of a national park near Portland, Oregon.

In the early 20th century, Soviet filmmaker Lev Kuleshov spliced together images of people looking at things with a bowl of soup, a woman on a divan and an open casket. Each object represented a different emotional state – hunger, desire and grief – but each subject “looking” at the object was the exact same image, repeated. The cast-down eyes implied to be considering nourishment were the exact same eyes that appeared to stare in utter loss at death. And thus the idea of the movie star: a figure onto whom all projections are equally valid.

First palpable hit of the evening: a full orchestra in the pit under hyper-alert Opera North stalwart James Holmes, saxophones deliciously rampant. Second hit: they've got the miking of the voices right (very rare in West End shows). Third: the first ensemble number, "Another opening, another show", sends spirits soaring. What follows is very good, sometimes excellent, occasionally fresh and startling.

Forgive the sports metaphor, but David Byrne knocked this one out of the park.

Here you will find Babe Paley, Slim Keith, CZ Guest, Gloria Guinness, Lee Radziwill, Marella Agnelli, the stylish leaders of society, gorgeous, gilded, well-married ladies: the men they were with – billionaires, corporate and cultural leaders – defined them. As did their shared best friend over several decades, the writer Truman Capote (1924-1984).

Anna Deavere Smith contains multitudes. As the solo performance artist recounts the testimonies she has selected from the more than 250 people she interviewed for this portrait of inequality and the criminal justice system in America, it is as if each person she has talked to possesses her.

Stumble across Grange Park Opera’s new brick-clad “Theatre in the Woods”, nestled amid a labyrinth of gardens and orchards next to the rambling Tudor pile of West Horsley Place in Surrey, and on a mild June evening you may feel as if you have fallen into some Home Counties version of a magic-realist novel.

“There’s a rhythm in the air around Memphis, there always has been,” Carl Perkins once said.

Right from the beginning of Simon Evans’s production of Tracy Letts's 1993 play, it’s clear we’re in for an intense, raw experience. A storm of almost symphonic musical accompaniment roars, lightning flashing over the claustrophobic trailer interior where the tight two hours-plus run of Killer Joe will play out.