The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not been very prominent in the news recently, but that doesn’t mean that it has gone away. As Julia Pascal’s 2003 play reminds us, religious and cultural tensions can go deep. Very deep. At the centre of her intense story, which is set over about 24 hours during the second intifada, is Jerusalem, a divided city, a contested territory, a place which is dangerous to cross. As bombs explode in cafés and on buses, the events of the drama illustrate the tight embrace of the personal and the political.

Families. Whether it's the House of Atreus, the court at Elsinore or the Archers, they tend to be of compelling interest. For most of us, loyalties, guilty secrets, truths that will out, petty jealousies and sentimentality tend to be the order of the day more often than towering passion and murder. And that is what Andrew Keatley focuses on in this gentle, poignant, often funny play about a family reunion in the run-up to the "things can only get better" election in 1997.

Seldom has there been such impassioned debate about whether a play has a right to exist. Writer Jonathan Maitland faced a barrage of criticism, with many accusing him of exploitation; others felt it was too soon for freshly unveiled horror to re-emerge on stage. Lead actor Alistair McGowan disagreed, noting Savile’s victims feel the telling of this tale comes “30 years too late”.

The premise might seem familiar: a famous photograph, taken by a Western journalist in fraught military and political circumstances, has repercussions many years later. The subject of the picture, a representative of an entirely different culture from that of the photographer, is anonymous, but the image is familiar all over the world. Attempting to bridge the gulf between subject and journalist leads only to further bitter misunderstanding.

While seven-way debate rages, broadcaster and debuting playwright Jonathan Maitland takes us back 25 years to a radically different political landscape: a time of regents, and of regicide. It’s 1990 – Thatcher the leader claiming divine right to rule, Geoffrey Howe her unexpected assassin. How did the mild-mannered Welshman, whose rhetorical powers Denis Healey compared with those of a dead sheep, become a wolf in sheep’s clothing?

The big news was that dashing Greg Wise was returning to the London stage after an absence of 17 years. Still best remembered as the handsome cad Willoughby in the film of Sense and Sensibility – now 20 years old – he appears in the intimate Park 200 auditorium as a middle-aged, care-worn father, oblivious to wrinkles and grizzled locks. He gives a performance so physically and emotionally charged, however, that his looks are irrelevant.

Has there ever been a successful dinner party on stage? It seems no sooner has the table been set than domestic disharmony erupts: opposing personalities obligingly clash, the veil of marital bliss is torn asunder, and terrible secrets are spilled along with the wine. In other words, dinner parties are the playwright’s bread and butter.

In the context of recent events in Iraq and Syria, the spectre of the ill-fated Iraq War of 2003 looms large once more. What better time for a revival of master-playwright David Hare’s story about conflict and personal relationships? As parliament is recalled to debate bombing the Islamic State, The Vertical Hour — which premiered on Broadway in 2006 and was then staged at the Royal Court two years later — opens at the smart Park Theatre in London’s Finsbury Park.

Richard Bean has had a busy year, and it isn’t over yet. Great Britain, his bawdy play about press ethics and police corruption, is transferring to the West End after hitting the spot at the National. Pitcairn, a new piece about the aftermath of the mutiny on the Bounty, will shortly arrive at the Globe after turning heads at the Chichester Theatre. And Made in Dagenham, a musical version of the 2010 film for which Bean has provided the book, looks likely to be one of the West End highlights of the autumn.

A few days ago I found myself sat in a Finsbury Park pub talking to a man who dismantled bombs for a living, who had completed two tours in Afghanistan fighting the unending war against Improvised Explosive Devices, and I will admit to being more than just a little nervous. You see, he had just read the script of my play Casualties.