theatre - showing at a stage near you

The Country Wife

William Wycherley's Restoration comedy marks a new West End initiative and couldn't be bolder, even if it could be funnier. There's a bit too much screeching as its anti-hero, the aptly named Horner, played with swaggering assurance by Toby Stephens, carves a swathe through the old wives and young moppets of the town by pretending he's impotent. Once cornered, they're Hornered, so to speak. The baroque splendours of London's most beautiful theatre are further decorated with the frenetic splutterings of David Haig's jealous Pinchwife and the arch randiness of Patricia Hodge's delicious Lady Fidget. A masterpiece, with knobs on.
Theatre Royal, Haymarket, SW1,
0870 901 3356,
trh.co.uk

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Macbeth

Here is the ultimate political thriller, with Patrick Stewart trampling his nation under foot and writhing in the stews of his own poetic imagination. Rupert Goold's stunning production is set in a white-tiled, below-ground abbatoir, where the witches dispense murderous hospitality and guests, ghosts and enemies arrive in a creaking old lift. Eastern Europe has come to Dunsinane with a vengeance, and for once the conceptual override proves irresistible. Stewart is as shockingly ruthless as Stalin or Ceaucescu, matched by a great trophy wife in Kate Fleetwood's Lady M. Film projections and Adam Cork's soundtrack are ominously atmospheric.
Gielgud Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue,
W1, 0870 950 0915,
delfontmackintosh.co.uk

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Swimming With Sharks

A cynical play about nasty Hollywood producers? Quelle surprise, darling. I mean, who's nice in the film business, apart from Richard Attenborough? The brilliance of George Huang's 1994 movie - clunkily adapted by Michael Lesslie - lies in its pincer movement narrative, which starts with the corpse and works both backwards and forwards (almost simultaneously) through a Hollywood nightmare. The play reasserts chronological decorum while sacrificing psychological mind games. Christian Slater is a pale shadow of Kevin Spacey as Buddy Ackerman, the abusive executive from hell. Where Spacey was psychotically sinister, Slater is merely a crosspatch rudesby in Wilson Milam's fast-moving, sleekly gothic production.
Vaudeville Theatre, Strand, WC2,
0870 890 0511, swimmingwithsharks.co.uk

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War Horse

Following previous years' His Dark Materials and Coram Boy, the National has rustled up another corking seasonal show with some of the most extraordinary equine sculptures you'll ever see: huge structures of corsets for horses, inhabited by actors and swishing great curtain-like manes. The focal point is Joey, a Dorset farm horse enlisted into the army in the First World War; lost in No Man's Land he's destined for destruction, before being rescued by the boy from back home. Michael Morpurgo's novel has been transformed by directors Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris into an unforgettable spectacular. Neigh-sayers will be horsewhipped.
National Theatre,
South Bank, SE1,
020 7452 3000, nationaltheatre.org

Once We Were Mothers

After its compelling seasons of Edwardian and suffragist dramas, the Orange Tree comes up to date with a piece by Lisa Evans about the challenges and tribulations of motherhood in the last century. Evans interleaves the stories of a contemporary Richmond mother of a Down's Syndrome girl with those of a bereaved mother in denial in 1950s Yorkshire (she says her daughter's been 'missing' for four years) and a persecuted Muslim woman in 1990s war-torn former Yugoslavia. It doesn't quite gel, but it's neatly done and chirpily well acted. Ends November 10.
Orange Tree, Clarence Street, Richmond,
020 8940 3633, orangetreetheatre.co.uk

Forbidden

Forbidden at Blackpool's Pleasure Beach is a Folies Bergere-style cabaret, an eyeball feast that invokes traditional floor shows with a modern circus twist. The stage is full of pink lingerie, Russian musclemen and gymnasts; the set, meanwhile, is like a big red boudoir with mirrors, laser lights and velvet swags. As the evening progresses it becomes a Balinese temple, the brothel scene in Sweet Charity and a Spanish sevillana with much foot-stomping and pouting. But I'm not sure if a family entertainment is any place for a devil batman to disport himself with a crowd of thigh-flashing girls in baby doll nightwear. One for the dads. Ends November 4.
Pleasure Beach,
Blackpool,
0870 444 5588,
pleasurebeach.com