This is a real humdinger of a Holmes, an intoxicating swirl through the mind of the fictional detective who has fascinated figures as diverse as Harrison Ford, Agatha Christie, and the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Joel Horwood’s update takes Conan Doyle’s original The Sign of Four and liberally spices it with elements of Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone, the BBC’s Sherlock and an opium dream, to create a storyline that keeps you on your toes at the same time as it leads you through a labyrinth. 

After her lyrical tribute last year to a gone-too-soon young poet, Letters from Max, Sarah Ruhl returns to the Hampstead Theatre with the same director, Blanche McIntyre, though this time in the main house and with larger forces. It’s a big-hearted, funny production.  

In the 70s, a science-inclined schoolboy like me was directed to young adult oriented biographies of Thomas Edison, of which there were many. They left out the more problematic aspects of his life, the dubious business practices and some of his more Victorian approaches to demonstrating the power of electricity (don’t Google it). Instead, they favoured the legend of a lone genius beating the odds to, quite literally, enlighten the world.

1536, Ava Pickett’s debut play, is a tribute to women who won’t shut up, especially ones living precarious lives in Tudor England in the year of the title. But this is not really a period piece.

In the 1920s, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was as famous as it gets really, author of the beloved Sherlock Holmes stories, a polymath and a rare British example of that most continental of figures, the public intellectual. Across The Atlantic, Harry Houdini was a phenomenon, the escapologist showman, personifying The Great American Dream, even making movies.

A century on, Holmes and Houdini (both of whom are invented characters, lest we forget) persist as metaphors and memes that require no explanation.

Those nostalgic for a time when the Haymarket offered big names in well-upholstered plays will have a field day at Grace Pervades, in which David Hare furthers his relationship with Ralph Fiennes.

For a master dramatist - even for a tyro really - The Price is a strangely uneven play, brilliant psychological insights diluted by clunking structural issues. You wonder what it would be like in the hands of a less talented cast, a less experienced director, performed on a less convincing set - it could unravel very quickly. It was something of a surprise to find that amongst the credits in the programme, its weakest link proved to be its writer, Arthur Miller.

Patriarchy is a trap for both men and women. This we know. But it’s not often that its takedown is as amazingly theatrical as this fabulous entertainment, Tender, by American playwright Dave Harris, now getting its wonderfully noisy premiere at the Soho Theatre. It’s a wildly immersive show, partly orgiastic, partly touching the bits other entertainments cannot reach, and brought to us by director Matthew Xia, who previously teamed up with the playwright to create the hit Tambo & Bones.

The aftermath of school massacres for those left behind, and the pros and cons of restorative justice have become two strong themes for drama in recent years. Writer Fran Kranz combines the two, in an intense, claustrophobic piece that attacks both the brain and the heart. 

There has been a trend in productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in recent years to portray Athens as a sexually repressive regime in which Queen Hippolyta is resentfully shackled to Theseus after he has conquered her in battle.