Arifa Akbar

David Eldridge’s two-hander depicts the difficult conversations that follow one partner’s cancer diagnosis

Two stories, centuries apart, are used to chart climate disaster in this ambitious musical with bitty scenes and cumbersome lyrics

Eye-popping visuals and a strong lead performance energise Matthew Dunster’s production – but the emotion gets lost amid the action

Overbearing life coach Winston and reluctant daughter Joy take a road trip through repression and half-spoken feelings

What do Swift and Plath have in common, and should Kamala Harris have spoken out about her political ambitions? The Argonauts author turns her lens on poetry, pop and patriarchy

Alliances and enmities form among a crew of butchers who are trying to shape new lives after prison despite ICE, addiction and the financial lure of criminality

Jack Holden has elegantly adapted Alan Hollinghurst’s Booker winner about class envy, gay culture and political scandal in 80s Britain

Two flat-earthers’ quest for truth in Antarctica descends into a mishmash of conspiracy theories, in Jessica Norman’s sparky yet heroically flawed debut play

Marianne Elliott directs Nick Payne’s tonally uneven play about a missing son that comes with ill-fitting moments of comedy

Jamie Bogyo’s debut play recounts the renaming of a Yale University college with broadstroke humour and some exquisitely sung a cappella interludes