Is there a healthier sound than that of laughter ringing round a theatre? 

There are plenty of opportunities to test that theory in Tinuke Craig’s riotous revival of The Big Life, two decades on from its first run at this very venue. Much has changed in that time, specifically the coming to light of the appalling mistreatment of the Windrush Generation at the hands of a callous, racist state. What might have felt then like an unnecessarily heavy-handed political undertow now feels, if anything, underplayed. 

Doom and gloom, we are told, may have abounded in the classical underworld, but Hadestown suggests otherwise. Returning to London five years after its run at the National Theatre, this time with a slew of Tony Awards, this bracing musical proves its mettle as a heart-warming and atmospheric feast of deeply soulful tunes.

So, a jukebox musical celebrating the apotheosis of the White Saviour, the ultimate carnival of rock stars’ self-aggrandisement and the Boomers’ biggest bonanza of feelgood posturing? One is tempted to stand opposite The Old Vic, point at the punters going in and tell anyone within earshot, “Tonight Thank God it’s them instead of you”. 

When entering a particular, well-populated region of MusicalTheatreLand, one has to check in a few items at the border. Weary cynicism, the desire for narrative coherence, that nerve that starts to throb when sentimentality oozes across the fourth wall – all need to be left behind. Like pantomime and opera, if you bring those attitudes with you, a dry desert is all you will see, but if you buy in, sometimes, not always, you’ll find oases too.

The giant crinolines are back, and the winsome little royal children with miniature temples on their heads, and the glorious songs. The King and I is at the Dominion for a six-week run: how does its storyline look under a 21st century follow-spot?

How many re-tellings can Alice Walker's The Color Purple take? A helluva lot, as the candid Sofia, one of the work's seminal characters, might put it.

This is, by my reckoning at least, the third major London production over the years of Pacific Overtures, Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's dazzling curiosity of a show first seen on Broadway in 1976 and reappraised ever since in stagings both large and small both sides of the Atlantic.

The National Theatre these days seems to be going from hit-to-hit, with transfers aplenty and full houses at home. And there's every reason to expect that this fizzy adaptation of Roald Dahl's 1983 creep-out, The Witches, has the West End and further in its sights.

In Annus Mirabilis, Philip Larkin wrote,

"So life was never better than 

In nineteen sixty-three 

(Though just too late for me) – 

Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban 

And the Beatles' first LP."

You really don’t want to pick up The Time Traveller’s Wife in a game of charades. Half the clock would be run down just showing that it’s a novel, a film, a TV series and a musical.