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.

Fragile egos abound. An older person (usually a man) has to bring the best out of the stars, but mustn’t neglect the team ethic. Picking the right players is critical. There’s never enough money, because everything that comes in this season is spent on the next. The media, with a sneer never too far from the old guard and its new version alternately snapping and fawning with little in between, has to be placated.

A single sofa is all we have on stage to attract our eye - the signifier of intimate family evenings, chummy breakfast TV and, more recently, Graham Norton’s bonhomie. Until you catch proper sight of the room’s walls that is, which are not, as you first thought, Duluxed in a bland magnolia shade, nor even panelled with upmarket modernist abstract paintings, befitting of the whiff of wealth that suffuses the space. It’s a man’s head, repeating and repeating and repeating, turned away, bull-necked, present but not present, intimidating from beyond the grave.

That friend you have who hates musicals – probably male, probably straight, probably not seen one since The Sound of Music on BBC 1 after the Queen’s Speech in 1978 – well, don’t send them to Charing Cross Theatre for this show. But that other friend you have – enjoyed Hamilton, likes a bit of Sondheim, seen a couple of operas – do send them.

Brief History of a Family is a psychological thriller with a story familiar to anyone who has seen Ripley, Saltburn or Six Degrees of Separation. A clever young man with low social status infiltrates a far more privileged family, with devastating results. The difference here is that it's set not among American or European elites but in the booming economy of China with its high-tech citadels and international aspirations. 

Taking on some of the contingent, nebulous quality of its subject, Jacqueline Feldman’s Precarious Lease examines the beginning and the end – in 2013 – of the famous Parisian squat, Le Bloc, thinking through the triumphs and consequences of the unique leniency that Paris had shown towards the preservation of such indeterminate spaces.

In a dingy room with dilapidated furniture on a dismal Sunday evening, two detectives prepare for an interview. The old hand walks out, with just a little too much flattery hanging in the air, leaving the interrogation in the hands of the up-and-coming thruster, a young woman investigating the disappearance of a young woman. Alone, with just a camera for company (we get the video feed also from hidden cameras too) she awaits the suspect for the showdown.

There are two main reasons to revive classics. The first is that they are really good; the second is that they have something to say about how the world is changing, perhaps more accurately, how our perception of it is changing. Both are true of Annie Kershaw’s slick, sexy, shocking production of Martin Crimp's translation, up close and personal, at the Jermyn Street Theatre.

This Celine Dion jukebox musical has been a big hit in New York, but crossing The Atlantic can be perilous for any production, so, docked now at the Criterion Theatre, does it sink or float?

It is not just Twelfth Night, it’s Twelfth Night, or What You Will in The Folio, a signpost of the choices the inhabitants, old and new, of Illyria must make. Perhaps it’s also an allusion to Will’s own choices as an actor/playwright in the all-male company who cross-dressed (and maybe more) as women and girls without batting an eyelid. As is so often the case with the comedies, the great entertainer doesn’t hesitate to smuggle in a soupçon of transgressive psychology under cover of farce.