At the conclusion of a year in which Britishness has come so resoundingly to the fore of the national debate – and with a play that at the time of its writing, 1605-6, was engaging with that concept no less urgently – the first impression made by Gregory Doran’s King Lear is how far removed it looks from any traditional sense of "British".

That old saw about a star being born really is on view at the Noel Coward Theatre, where newcomer Charlie Stemp justifies and then some, the fuss being made about him in this "revisal" of the onetime Tommy Steele vehicle Half A Sixpence. Whether you'll respond as warmly to the show itself may depend on your appetite for nostalgia and the implicit message of a piece at considerable odds with an aspirational climate that long ago left the attitudes on view here in the dust.

So, the Inspector has come calling yet again. Twenty-four years have passed since Stephen Daldry’s graphic revision of JB Priestley’s moral tub-thumper opened at the National, followed by a tour of duty in the West End that seemed to go on forever. The Birling family house collapsed eight times a week at the Aldwych, the Garrick, the Novello and then Wyndhams, and set builders never had it so good.

The beauty of the past is that it’s a foreign country, and you don’t need a visa to visit it. With the free movement of the imagination you can conjure up life as it might have once been experienced. You can even join a re-enactment society. In the theatre, the evocation of a pre-industrial landscape has a noble lineage, with outstanding examples such as Sue Glover’s lyrical Bondagers (1991) or David Harrower’s haunting Knives in Hens (1995) always on the far horizon.

When's the last time you heard an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical described as a gas, a hoot, an unpretentious delight? All those qualities, and more, are there for the savouring in School of Rock, which has reached the West End a year on from its Broadway debut and is going to make a lot of children (and their parents) happy for some time to come.

If you thought that a contemporary drama about forcible repatriation, set in an Immigration removal centre, would be about the plight of those confined in places like the infamous Yarl’s Wood, in Removal Men writers MJ Harding and Jay Miller give us something unexpected.

When David Bowie first met with the producer Robert Fox to discuss Lazarus back in 2013, you now have to wonder if he was seriously contemplating his own mortality. The clue, of course, lies in the title, and that of Bowie's extraordinary last album, Blackstar.

With the Bush Theatre’s main building undergoing renovations, this company’s shows are being staged in a selection of temporary spaces in West London. So, on this dark and freezing evening, I make my way to The Tabernacle, a Grade II-listed building in Powis Square, Notting Hill. It was once a church and is now a community centre.

“Britain is a world by itself.” It could be the slogan of the year – and rather longer, probably – but the phrase comes from Shakespeare’s late romance Cymbeline. Its Act III scene, in which Britain announces that it is breaking its allegiances to the Roman Empire, surely can’t ever have played before with quite the nuance that Melly Still’s RSC production gives it. It premiered at Stratford in May, when the big Brexit question was still open, and now reaches the Barbican with redoubled relevance.

What would a Trump follower make of a successful businessman who grew his company on the proceeds of a negligent decision, and then topped himself because of a belated sense of responsibility? What a dumbass! He wouldn’t be about to become President of the United States, for sure. He’ll be paying his taxes next!