Buzzcut Festival, Glasgow

Back for its fourth year, Glasgow’s Buzzcut festival of experimental theatre and live art has proved itself one of the most essential dates on the performance calendar. The brainchild of Rosana Cade and Nick Anderson, this artist-led festival showcases the work of both established and emerging artists from all across the UK, including a substantial number from Glasgow’s thriving artistic community. What’s more, all performances are pay-what-you-can and anything raised goes straight to the artists. Look out for work from Nic Green, Sleepwalk Collective, Sylvia Rimat, Brian Lobel and more.
Pearce Institute, Wed to 22 Mar
LG

Anna Karenina, Manchester

A co-production with West Yorkshire Playhouse, this stage version of Leo Tolstoy’s great novel of doomed love is directed by Ellen McDougall. McDougall’s Gate production of Idomeneus was one of the great pleasures of last year’s theatre and she received an Olivier nomination for her production of Ivan And The Dogs for ATC. She uses Jo Clifford’s pared-back adaptation, which was admired when it premiered in 2005 for entwining the story of the unhappily married Anna with that of Levin, who turns his back on polite society and returns to his estate, determined to create a better and more just world.
Royal Exchange Theatre, Thu to 2 May
LG

Bad Jews, London

In this time of news-worthy antisemitism, a play called Bad Jews might raise a few eyebrows. But that hasn’t stopped playwright Joshua Harmon’s domestic drama becoming the best-selling production at both Bath’s Ustinov Studio and the St James Theatre in SW1, from where it now transfers to the West End. Set in a Manhattan apartment after the death of a grandfather who had survived the Holocaust, a family – including a fanatically religious granddaughter, her wealthy cousin and his non-Jewish girlfriend – fight over an heirloom. It’s a sympathetic and funny look at how people deal with their Jewish identity and heritage.
Arts Theatre, WC2, Wed to 30 May
MC

A Breakfast Of Eels, London

Robert Holman’s work has been staged at such varied institutions as the Royal Court, RSC and the Bush Theatre. His latest work, A Breakfast Of Eels, plays as part of the Print Room’s second season at the Coronet cinema in Notting Hill. In a London garden in late summer, two orphans meet at “Daddy’s” funeral and together reveal a painful and difficult journey from childhood to adulthood without parents. It’s directed by Robert Hastie, whose acclaimed production of My Night With Reg is at the Apollo Theatre, and the cast comprises Matthew Tennyson, who was in Holman’s Making Noise Quietly war trilogy at the Donmar, and Andrew Sheridan, who featured in the playwright’s Jonah And Otto.
Print Room At The Coronet, W11, Mon to 11 Apr
MC

Man To Man, Cardiff

Manfred Karge began his career working as an actor at Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble, and there is more than a touch of the Brechtian to his play about a cross-dressing crane operator, Ella Gericke, who assumes the identity of her dead husband in order to survive in Nazi Germany. Best known as the play that first brought Tilda Swinton to attention when it premiered in the UK at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre in 1987, it is translated and adapted here by Alexandra Wood in a version that aims to offer an intimate and highly physical interpretation. It marks the first in-house production under Graeme Farrow’s artistic direction at the WMC, which hopes to produce more home-grown work as part of its 10th anniversary celebrations.
Wales Millennium Centre, Fri to 27 Mar
LG

The Jew Of Malta, Stratford-upon-Avon

Like The Merchant Of Venice, Christopher Marlowe’s late 16th-century drama presents a portrait of Jewishness that sits uncomfortably with modern sensibilities. It attracts fewer revivals than Shakespeare’s play, and that may be because its tone is tricky. It was described by TS Eliot as “a farce of the old English humour” and while it certainly is a particularly savage farce, it is also one that – in a good production – can shed light on the plight of those who are constantly viewed as outsiders. Here Jasper Britton plays the Machiavellian Barabas, who is prepared to use murder and betrayal to exact his revenge on those who deprived him of riches and his daughter.
Swan Theatre, Wed to 8 Sep
LG