In 2012, the award-winning American writer Sarah Ruhl met a Yale playwriting student who became a special part of her life. Out of their friendship she created Letters from Max, a 2018 book of their correspondence, then a play performed in New York in 2023.

MOR. Twee. Unashamedly crowdpleasing. Are such descriptors indicative of a tedious night in the stalls? For your reviewer, who has become jaded very quickly with a myriad of searing examinations of mental health crises and wake up calls about the forthcoming environmental collapse, I often find comfort in material more suited to the large print section of the library. But the show still has to be good and that’s a big challenge when dealing with "smaller" subject matter.

Danish singer MØ is a paradox. Initially she appeared to be another Scandi electro-pop princess of the bangers. The monster 2015 hit “Lean On” with Major Lazer jacked her profile, briefly, through the roof, but, while she’s worked with everyone from Iggy Azalea to DJ Benny Benassi, she seemed to step sideways from pure pop, tempering it with something more Nordic and melancholy. Her fourth album persuasively continues in this direction.

Yeti Lane’s second album The Echo Show was released in March 2012. The Paris-based duo’s LP was stunning: holding together overall, as well as on a track-by-track basis. There were obvious influences: Kraftwerk, late-period Spacemen 3, motorik, My Bloody Valentine. But it didn’t sound like anyone else. Charlie Boyer and Ben Pleng had created a wonder.

Cleveland is probably the American city most like the one in which I grew up. Early into the icy embrace of post-industrialisation, not really on the way to anywhere, but not a destination either and obsessed with popular music and sports, it's very Scouse. Okay, the Mersey did not catch fire as the Cuyahoga River did in 1969, but it would not have surprised anyone in Liverpool had it done so.

For a long stretch of its first half, Dominique Morrisseau’s 2016 award-winner, Skeleton Crew, seems a conventional workplace drama, though in a much gentler key than Lynn Nottage’s Sweat. But this slow burn catches fire.

It’s 2012 and the London Olympics might as well be happening on the Moon for Jen and Stacey. In fact, you could say the same for everyone else scrabbling a living in Bradford – or anywhere north of Watford – and we know what those left-behind places did when presented with a ballot box in 2016 and 2019.

György Kurtág is 97 and the last man standing of the post-war generation of avant-garde composers. Last night the Proms staged the UK premiere of his first opera, started in his eighties and premiered in 2018, a setting of Samuel Beckett’s typically mystifying play Endgame. Sadly, for all the brilliant passages of orchestral writing, and top-notch singing and playing, as an opera it’s a bit of a damp squib in which some minutes hung heavy.

On the face of it, La Syndicaliste (aka The Sitting Duck) is a conspiracy thriller that runs along familiar tracks: clever woman begins to suspect dirty dealings at a very high level in the high-stakes industry she works for and lands herself in a dangerous mess. There are anonymous phonecalls, menacingly bright headlights behind her… Think Silkwood in stilettos.

Brit alt-indie outfit Django Django refuse easy categorisation and, as a result, during a decade-plus career, have never quite found their place with the wider public. Critical acclaim has come their way, and those who’ve kept an ear open know their catalogue contains gems (“First Light”, “Hail Bop” and “In Your Beat” spring to mind) as well as great remixes.