Steven (David Ames) is having a birthday party. He’s invited his closest friends – two of whom have recently started dating their personal trainer, Steve – and his partner, of course: Stephen (Joe Aaron Reid). Their eight-year-old son, Stevie, is being babysat by his grandma. Even the handsome Argentine waiter (Nico Conde) is called Esteban.

It’s the vulnerability of the robot that strikes you in this subtle, intelligent production from the German theatre group Rimini Protokoll. From the Maschinenmensch in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis to Roy Batty in Blade Runner, there’s no shortage of automatons providing their different takes on the human condition, yet few exude the sheer existential exhaustion of the narrator of Uncanny Valley.

At first glance, it was the most unlikely of friendships, even for the solipsistic milieu of the New York art scene. Andy Warhol: crown prince of Pop art, uber-celebrity, one of the most iconic figures in the world; and Jean-Michel Basquiat, the rebellious, dreadlocked, graffiti artist turned neo-expressionist wunderkind.

The divide between theatre critics and the theatrical profession has always been a chasm, but occasionally a wire has been thrown between the two and plucky or foolhardy individuals have attempted to traverse it. A three-times-unsuccessful applicant to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in my teens, I managed to turn actor in middle age in Top Hat and Spamalot in the West End. These were, however, merely stunts dreamt up by producers to promote their shows and my performances were unstartlingly overlooked in the Olivier Awards.   

“You could read at home,” says Bettina (Anoushka Chadha), Year 10, her school uniform perfectly pressed, hair neatly styled. “You could be an annoying little shit at home,” retorts her sister Asha (Safiyya Ingar), Year 13, all fire and fury in Doc Martens and rainbow headphones.

Carey Crim’s 2017 play arrives from the US at north London's Park Theatre trailing a feminist playwriting award for its dissection of what happens when a smart college senior raised by two women starts to question her parentage.

Wind the clock back 45 years and the Big Apple was bankrupt, the lights had gone out and many native New Yorkers were packing their bags. Gangs controlled whole neighbourhoods, drugs were the currency of choice and, for a kid with no college, prospects were strictly limited. The movie Saturday Night Fever captured this social decay, illustrating the crisis of confidence that suffused so many big Western cities.

Somewhere in the world right now, one can hear Mister Mister's AOR hit, "Broken Wings" on an MOR radio station, capturing mid-Eighties synth pop perfectly. Few listeners will know that its inspiration is a 1912 autobiographical novel by Lebanese-American poet, Kahlil Gibran. A source that worked for a four-minute pop song has now been extended by two hours and made into a West End musical. Stranger ideas have worked – unfortunately, this one doesn't.

If Florian Zeller isn’t a Wordle fan, I’d be very surprised. As with the hit online game, the French playwright likes to offer up a puzzle for the audience to solve, clue by clue, before the curtain falls.

Black women often find themselves subject to a double dose of prejudice. Pressure. They face everyday racism as well as sexism. It’s called misogynoir, and Queens of Sheba is a short show dedicated to calling it out. In as joyous and energetic way as possible.