There’s a common understanding about journalists, especially ones at the top of their game, that they’re flying by the seat of their pants – propelled by adrenalin, deadlines, ambition and, just occasionally, righteousness.

September 5 encapsulates all of that, bar the virtue perhaps, and with the concrete deadline replaced by another practical pressure – of live broadcast – and the ethical decisions that arise when the story in front of the camera is literally one of life or death. 

The opening scene of the Old Vic’s Oedipus is dominated by a giant backdrop of a skull-like face, eyes shut and rock-like. It belongs to the actor playing Oedipus, presumably, Rami Malek. This is as near to a close-up of the title character as we get.

Your response to Barney Norris’s one-man play, based on David Foenkinos’s bestselling novel as translated by Megan Jones, probably depends on which of the Gens is yours. 

The phenomenal global success of Six began when two young writers decided to give voices to the wives of a powerful man, bringing them out of their silent tombs and energising them and, by extension, doing the same for the women of today.

It would be hard to find an antihero more anti than Eugene Onegin. The protagonist of Alexander Pushkin’s long verse novel of 1833 is a wrecker of lives. Charismatically handsome yet arrogant, cynical and bored, his effect on those who fall under his spell is toxic. And yet in the mid-1960s his story suggested itself as material for a ballet so luminous and compelling that it has outlived its choreographer by more than half a century.

In a world tainted with racism and homophobia, the Bush Theatre is something of a refuge from prejudice. As one of the most queer friendly venues in London, it’s no surprise that this theatre is now staging babirye bukilwa’s … Blackbird Hour, a play which explores the experiences of a black queer woman who finds herself on the edge.

What a delight to see an almost full Queen’s Hall for a programme solely of contemporary music. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s New Dimensions series, launched this season, sees a host of newer classical works performed and appears to be drawing in regular audience members as well as a younger crowd.

It’s been 50 years since the USA bowed to the inevitable and pulled out of Vietnam, in the midst of harrowing scenes of anguish and chaos.

Saturday night could have given us the opportunity to witness the Opera North debut of Canadian soprano Layla Claire at the Grand Theatre, as well as Annabel Arden’s new production of The Flying Dutchman.

If you saw Upstart Crow on television or on stage in the West End, you’ll know the schtick of Sheldon Epps’ dazzling show Play On! Take a Shakespearean play’s underlying plot and characters and relocate them for wit and giggles. “Make it a musical“, you say? Okay, but who’s going to do the score, who’s going to dare to follow in the footsteps of Lenny and Steve, of Cole, of Elton (okay that one came a bit later)? “Duke Ellington!” Right. You’ve sold it.