Tom Stoppard's plays are brilliant, peopled full of characters that stay with you. Leopoldstadt may be his last play as he has suggested, but I think it is his most personal.
It was the New York Times who dubbed the late AR Gurney as the playwright who explored Upper-Crust Anxieties. In his Pulitzer Prize nominated play Love Letters, he uses the epistolatory style to explore the relationship between Andrew Makepeace Ladd III (Martin Shaw) and Melissa Gardner (Jenny Seagrove) who first meet and correspond as schoolchildren and who write letters to each other for all of her lifetime.
Reviewed at the Young Vic is Australian director Simon Stone's adaptation and direction of Federico Garcia Lorca's Yerma, the story of a woman obsessed with becoming pregnant, which ends tragically. The main attraction here is not purely the admirable script but the acting of Billie Piper in the lead role. Her performance scooped the best actress awards at the Critics Circle, Evening Standard and Olivier Awards this year. Those who haven't managed to buy a ticket at the sold out Young Vic may secure one for the National Theatre Live broadcast to cinemas worldwide, to be recorded on 31st August, and shown then in the UK or thereafter in other countries.