Chris Hislop

Strindberg's one-act play Playing with Fire is performed in a brand new translation and adaptation by Anna Ostergren, who also directs at the Drayton Theatre. Sadly, Strindberg's "comedy" is reduced to meandering torpitude here – a rather poor production, good efforts from some of the cast, but mostly just dull.

I had the pleasure of seeing Belarus Free Theatre do their thing last year, so expected their new piece this year to hold few surprises: politics, nudity, angrily-shouted Belarusian, and so on. How wrong I was. At the Young Vic.

After successful runs at various Fringe Festivals, Gehring and Ketelaars brought their critically acclaimed show Bye Bye World to Battersea Arts Centre for two nights only, as well as presenting their new scratch piece. If this piece and the snippet of their next is anything to go by, these are two performers you certainly shouldn’t miss the next time they grace London.

The opening of a new London theatre is always exciting, and the new Park Theatre (aptly named, as it's next to Finsbury Park station) is certainly positioned to be a new power-house, with excellent local connections and an exciting first season. However, season opener These Shining Lives, while excellently performed, doesn't excite as much as the space.

Teatro Entre Escombros have done it again: following on from last year's London run of oddball tragicomedy The Mole and the Worm, they return with the story of a siren, with some reference to Joyce, Greek tragedy and trumpets. It's not as polished as previous work, but the spark underneath is as original and madcap as ever. At the Last Refuge.

Following its premiere at the Liverpool Everyman in 2012, Frank McGuinness' new play heads to London to play at the Tricycle Theatre – and it deserves its transfer. This searing production is a delight, although more subtle direction might have led to a more powerful production.

This spring/summer, the always-inventive Yard Theatre opens its doors to a huge number of young companies as part of The Generation Game – a celebration of new work, with ten weeks of new pieces showcasing young talent. In the opening show, experimental company 3Fates tackle Emily Dickinson and the line between art and politics in a work-in-progress piece.

And so on to the second of the Yard's first week of new work offered through their festival The Generation Game: Bush Moukarzel's wonderful and elegaic Proustian one-man show Souvenir pastiches À la recherche du temps perdu by deconstructing memory in a collection of beautiful and haunting images. Simply spectacular.

Somerset Maugham's The Breadwinner couldn't be a more fitting play for today, with a stockbroker's decision to leave his old life behind in the 1930s an interesting counterpoint to today's feelings around brokers. Sadly, stagecraft is what lets this interesting script down, with a rather lacklustre production that needed to make stronger decisions at the Orange Tree.

Kali Theatre's latest piece plays out a courtroom drama in the former Westminster County Courts above Brown's – but the site-specific setting doesn't save the rather pedestrian script. Performances are decent, and the Kali focus on South Asian women delivers an interesting story and themes, but all in all the piece feels rather uninspired and flat. At Brown's Courtrooms.