Zadie Smith might not be the only writer who can rhyme "tandem" with "galdem", but she’s the only one who can do it in an adaptation of Chaucer. In The Wife of Willesden, her debut play, a modern version of one of the Canterbury Tales, Smith’s talent for mixing high and low is at full power.

A fascinating song list that juxtaposed originals with musical theatre, pop songs, Brazilian music and more. An inventive, listening band – take a bow Glenn Zaleski (piano), Alexa Tarantino (flute), Marvin Sewell (guitar), Yasushi Nakamura (bass) and Keito Ogawa (percussion) – who supported singer and song in the most empathetic way possible.

In late 1894 an unknown 28-year-old science tutor and wannabe writer finished a story in his dismal lodgings just north of Euston station. Divorced, after a brief, calamitous marriage to a cousin, he lived with a new lover even though the hostile landlady cursed them loudly to her neighbours. Meanwhile, bankruptcy loomed and rattling trains billowed filthy smoke through their rooms. 

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike has taken eight years to reach the London stage, which is surprisingly long for the Tony Award winner for Best Play of 2013: the pandemic, unsurprisingly, didn't help. But in a burst of somewhat un-Chekhovian confidence, here it now is re-cast from a previous run in Bath, and the wait has been worth it.  

Henry Woolf's place in theatre history is small but significant, a bit like Woolf was himself. Until his death on November 11, at the age of 91, he was the last survivor of a gang who made friends at Hackney Down grammar school in the 1930s. The most famous member of the group was Harold Pinter. The Room, Pinter’s first play, was more or less commissioned by him.

A celebration of that most extraordinary instrument, the human voice, this year’s edition of Jazz Voice – which gladly welcomed back a live audience and a full-strength EFG London Jazz Festival Orchestra – ranged from music of intimate delicacy to stunning virtuosity. Across two separate sets, eight singularly gifted artists showcased their distinctive storytelling gifts, enveloped by Guy Barker’s richly detailed arrangements.

Like all great art, Samuel Beckett's works find a way to speak to you as an individual, stretching from page to stage and on, on, on into our psyches. This happens not through sentimental manipulation or cheap sensationalism, but through the accrual of impressions, the gathering of memories, the painstaking construction of meaning. Rarely far from view on the London stage, Beckett has two seminal one acts on view briefly in London before touring to Bath. 

After lockdown, the stage monologue saved British theatre. At venue after venue, cash-strapped companies put single actors into simple playing spaces to deliver good stories for audiences that just wanted to visit playhouses again. But this theatre form, which is relatively inexpensive and often immune against the pingdemic, does have its limitations. If the essence of drama is conflict between two or more characters, the absence of the other people on stage can often defuse the emotional force of the story.

Tuesday, 8 November 2016. Vera is in a New York hospital room giving birth to a son. On anxiously checked phones, the votes are piling up for Hillary, but the states are piling up for Trump. Vera’s world will never be the same again.

Like a previous occupant of this venue, Six, The Choir Of Man started life as a quirky Edinburgh show and has gone on to be staged around the world to adoring audiences, tapping into a vibe that’s as much about participation as viewing, the show as much a gig as a musical.