The classical-music industry loves dead icons; witness the endless reissuing and remarketing of recordings by Kathleen Ferrier and Jacqueline du Pré. Canadian pianist Glenn Gould died from a stroke at the age of 50 in 1982 and his seminal Bach discs have never been out of the catalogue since. Françis Giraud told Gould’s story on screen before in his 1993 film Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, an imaginative series of vignettes depicting scenes from Gould’s life.

Suzy, a private in the British army, has just returned from a tour of Iraq, back to the loving embrace of her close family in Middlesbrough. There are a couple of flies in the ointment, though; her nine-year-old daughter is distraught at her absence and refuses to speak to her, and her husband, Mark, a squaddie in the same regiment who has not been on the same tour, wants his loving embrace immediately and frequently.

“Nice is different from good,” sings one of Stephen Sondheim’s characters. And mostly, it is different, “nice” rarely being “good”. Christopher Bruce, however, blows that theory right out of the water, because Hush, his 2006 piece which opens Rambert’s Sadler’s Wells season, is both good and nice. And that’s much more remarkable than it seems: attempting to find the beauty, the depth and the radiance of “good” has caused many great artists to stumble. That Bruce achieves his goals with such serenity and power seems little short of miraculous.

The National Theatre’s new production of Hamlet is both a very good Hamlet, yet also a somehow disappointing one. For a work so rich in possibilities, with so much emotion, so much superb and intricate engineering, it is often like this, in England or anywhere else - inspiring and unconvincing at once.

The Blitz may be about to descend on dance in theatres, but Rambert have the authentic British grit under fire. They truck on into a bleak autumn with the courage to present to the straitened nation a new commission of music and dance, and a new acquisition from an unknown German choreographer. Perhaps most radically, three female choreographers on one bill (and that’s not something I’ve known in my lifetime, at least not at this level).

You can see the appeal of being a slacker. You don’t work, you just sit around like a cool dude and shoot the breeze; you smoke, you drink, you take drugs, er, lots of drugs. You can call people “man”. Hell, you don’t even need to wear your sneakers all day - just kick them off and go barefoot. Only one problem: emotional commitment is a big no, no. American playwright Annie Baker’s new play, which opened at the Bush Theatre last night, takes a long calm look at slackerdom’s highs and lows.

Daniel Kitson only occasionally performs at comedy venues at the Fringe these days - perhaps a late-night spot here and there, though not a full set - but it has become almost a tradition that he writes a new piece for the Traverse each year. On the cusp of comedy and theatre is, surely, storytelling and Kitson, winner of the Perrier comedy award 2002, has become a storyteller of excellence.

Anyone who saw Ben Stiller in Zoolander will know that he is a very fine actor. He made his over-the-top character both believable and lovable (well, up to a point on the latter, but you know what I mean) while playing the fashion model’s absurdities for every laugh he could get. And now a fascinating counterpoint comes with his touching and beautifully reined-in portrayal of another narcissist, Roger Greenberg, a 41-year-old failed musician turned carpenter who is recovering from a breakdown.

We’ll never feel the real impact - an all too apposite word - of the violence in Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me, given that it has dominated pre-release publicity for the film. The suspense of waiting for it will surely distract viewers from any suspense that the director was trying to create naturally through the formal build-up of unease within the plot and environment he’s taken on from Jim Thompson’s noir novel.