It may not serve up all that much to get your teeth into, but Bijan Sheibani’s production of this 1959 play by Arnold Wesker looks fantastic on the plate. Giles Cadle’s saucepan-shaped set is framed by a giant chalkboard, scrawled over and over with daily specials in faded lettering; beyond it, the globular lamps and plate-glass window of the Tivoli restaurant can be glimpsed. 

It’s not much of an exaggeration to suggest that new plays by up-and-coming talents are something of an Achilles heel at the National Theatre. Even Mike Bartlett’s much lauded Earthquakes in London was a far more exciting production than it was a play, while Greenland proved so devoid of audience that it was pulled early from the schedule. The latter did no favours to anyone by yoking together four dramatists including the impressive Penelope Skinner. Now four more emerging playwrights have been given their head but this time their voices remain distinct in the two double bills that comprise Double Feature.

Can Thomas Heywood's prosy Jacobean drama of country folk hunting, card playing, screwing around, sliding aristocratically into debt and harrowing one another to death translate successfully to the aftermath of the First World War? Only, perhaps, as edgy semi-farce, towards which Katie Mitchell's nervy, twilit production sometimes veers, not often intentionally. Acting to make you half believe in impossible characters might have saved it. But here you spend less time focusing on the poor puppets who flap around Mitchell's claustrophobic world than looking at the handsome, haunting set.

Miracles and omens, blind faith and free will: Ibsen’s epic 1873 drama sinks its teeth into some tough, meaty themes. That it neither breaks the jaw, nor proves totally indigestible in this British premiere is testament to the power of Jonathan Kent’s production and the paciness of Ben Power’s version of the text.

Dropped trousers, audience participation and an onstage skiffle band fronted by a singer/songwriter boasting specs by way of Buddy Holly: what has become of the National Theatre's Lyttelton auditorium? Well, let's just say that for the entire first act of One Man, Two Guvnors, it's got to be easily the giddiest theatrical address in town. And when the momentum flags, as it does somewhat after the interval, not to worry. By that point, Richard Bean's Goldoni rewrite has generated enough goodwill that you all but float home.

A stench of decay rises from Howard Davies's production of this 1903 drama by Anton Chekhov. Ranyevskaya’s wooden home, designed with characteristic visual eloquence by Bunny Christie, is quietly rotting. Weeds sprout through cracks, the windows are filthy; an ugly pylon raises its arms in the foreground, its wires stretching into a future of seismic political and social change for which the family – and Russia itself – are so ill prepared.

The murders of five prostitutes in Ipswich: it’s hard to imagine a less likely subject for a musical, not least because the memory of the crimes of forklift-truck driver Steve Wright, committed in late 2006, is still so horribly fresh. But there is nothing lurid about this exceptional piece of theatre, created by Alecky Blythe and composer Adam Cork, and directed with restraint, tenderness and potent simplicity by Rufus Norris. It’s moving, fascinating and even funny. And if it is also occasionally shocking, it’s only because of its startling directness and honesty.

“Love is no solution to life,” declares a line from Clifford Odets’s 1938 drama; and in straitened times, then and now, it’s a sentiment that carries considerable doleful weight. And yet every character here is in desperate search of that elusive something to elevate the banal business of day-to-day existence – a personal rocket to the moon. Without it, they are trapped in endless Monday mornings, soul-destroying work that doesn’t bring in enough to pay the bills, and relationships in which they turn into “two machines, counting up the petty cash”.

Home truths have a unique power to grab at your entrails and tear at your peace of mind. But so often, in so many families, the truth remains too painful to acknowledge, and togetherness is bought by means of keeping secrets. And, of course, in any family drama worth its salt, those secrets will inevitably come tumbling out. On stage, the effect can be both thrilling and emotionally powerful, as evidenced by Ryan Craig’s excellent new play, which opened last night at the National Theatre.

Like the misbegotten monster at its heart, this stage version of Mary Shelley’s seminal novel is stitched together from a number of discrete parts; and though some of the pieces are in themselves extremely handsome, you can all too clearly see the joins. Here’s a bit of half-baked dance theatre, there a scene of simple, touching humanity. And for each dollop of broad ensemble posturing, there’s a visually stunning scenic effect.