One of the most common genres of contemporary Brit drama is the "me and my mates" play – usually stories about flatsharing twentysomethings. Although, over the past decade, this type of drama has been somewhat overtaken by the return of the family play, you can still spot the genre in new writing venues all over the country. So Penelope Skinner’s new 90-minute piece, which opened last night at the Bush Theatre, is – despite its evocative name (which means the colour seen by the eye in perfect darkness) – at first sight as familiar as an old sofa.

It's common to feel a real sense of doom when you approach the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre. But it’s not the dodgy hoodies that turn your legs to jelly, it’s the sheer ugliness of the architecture. Yes, aesthetically, this is urban hell. But it’s also the site of the Royal Court’s Local project, in which a rundown shop unit has been turned into a makeshift theatre. Random, a spirited revival of Debbie Tucker Green’s 2008 play, is the first of a season of edgy dramas to make the trek from Sloane Square to Southwark.

For the life of me I cannot understand why London Assurance is not performed more often. It’s a rollicking comedy, written in 1841 but which has a Restoration heart, with a cast list that includes a wideboy named Dazzle, a valet Cool, a servant Pert, a lawyer Meddle and - hold your sides - a horsey broad brandishing a whip named Lady Gay Spanker. Calm down, now.

In movies and on TV we expect sequels and spin-offs and the perpetuation of a franchise whereby we follow Rocky, The Terminator, or whomever seemingly to the grave. But theatre has tended to take the high road: Chekhov never revealed whether the three sisters actually reached Moscow. (What do you think?) And the nearest Beckett got to Waiting For Godot 2 are Hamm and Clov in Endgame, who can be seen as Didi and Gogo filtered through an even bleaker end of the existential prism.

Arthur Schnitzler belonged to a culture of inquiry and experiment, in which dreams and desire were crying out to be articulated and delineated; sexual needs were the unexplored stuff of life - how well Vienna painters like Klimt and Schiele knew this - and, as Freud worked it all out for us, not necessarily dangerous. Where better to bring this to flesh-and-blood life than on stage?

Regular punters at the King’s Head are familiar with cheerily naked gay romps, they are quite a speciality in this much favoured North London haunt, possibly enhanced by the intimate dimensions of the theatre itself. In Martin Lewton's Lord Arthur's Bed the stark lighting and very basic set – a double bed and a dining chair – further highlight the sensation of almost prurient proximity, something almost immediately addressed by Ruaraidh Murray’s very in-yer-face Jim, who tells the audience that “you are our webcam”.

“There is no hell, there is no heaven. This, this is real, this is now, and here is where matters.” So Professor Philip Goodman, sceptical expert in parapsychology and debunker of superstition, assures us. Except that what we are watching isn’t real, it’s theatre. The Professor is actually Andy Nyman, creative partner of celebrated trickster and mentalist Derren Brown and co-author of Ghost Stories with Jeremy Dyson of comic grotesques The League of Gentlemen.

The Vaudeville Theatre is turning into London's de facto playground for female icons from American TV. A few weeks ago, the venue hosted the misbegotten local cabaret debut of Will and Grace star Megan Mullally, who had scarcely set foot on stage before announcing that she had left her star-making role of Karen at home. (That's not all that was absent from the evening.) Now, along comes Kim Cattrall, in her third London stage appearance since becoming everyone's favourite glamour puss from Sex and the City, and guess what?

Although our culture is obsessed with youth, very few adults can connect directly with teenagers. Instead teens have become the object of our fears — there’s even a posh word for this: ephebiphobia. In drama, teens are often portrayed as a problem to be solved, and deprived of their own voices. By welcome contrast, Philip Ridley’s Moonfleece, which opened last night in London and will tour the north of England, is unforgettably teenage in every way — it is young, young, young!

It is difficult for modern audiences to appreciate just how shocking Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts was when it was first published in 1881. Its sexual and syphilitic storyline - how the sins of the fathers are visited upon their sons - was considered immoral, loathsome even, and audiences must have felt deeply uncomfortable watching their Victorian, Christian hypocrisies laid bare. So how to make Ghosts relevant to today’s theatregoers?