Lloyd Evans

The Tempest Old Vic, until 21 August Sucker Punch Royal Court, until 31 July Last week when I trotted over to the Old Vic to see The Tempest I had no idea I was about to experience one of the strangest performances of my life. About 20 minutes into the show a heavily built man arrived and installed himself with much effortful wheezing and groaning in the seat just behind me. His rasps and gasps continued for some time and when their tremors finally subsided I was able to return my attention to the play. But then he fell asleep. And then he started snoring. And snoring and snoring.

Ingredient X Royal Court, until 19 June Canary Hampstead, until 12 June In the old days the Royal Court knew that the best way to entertain local millionaires was to stage plays that wallowed in distress and squalor and featured four crack addicts in a squat stabbing each other to death with infected needles. Things changed under Dominic Cooke, who introduced a lighter touch and brought wit, intelligence and a sense of fun to the theatre. But nostalgia is back. The Court has revived its crack-house quartet formula in Nick Grosso’s new play, Ingredient X. The setting is a London high-rise. There’s no plot. The action concerts the attempts of two characters to overcome their enthusiasm for alcohol and powders while the other two booze merrily away.

Love the Sinner Cottesloe, until 10 July Ditch Old Vic Tunnels, Waterloo Approach Road, until 26 June Bickering vicars at the National. A new play by Drew Pautz invites us to consider whether the Church should ordain gay clergypersons. It’s a paradox that an organisation run by men in skirts is so vexed by the prospect of admitting homosexuals to their club. Pautz’s play neatly dramatises this contradiction in the person of Mike, a Protestant lay volunteer, who has a fling with a rent boy while attending a conference in Africa. The rent boy follows Mike home, claims sanctuary in his local church and compels him to help with his asylum claim.

A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky Lyric, Hammersmith, until 5 June Counting the Ways Oval House The Lyric theatre in Hammersmith has an eccentric approach to the dearth of writing talent. Unable to find a good playwright, it has commissioned three bad ones to showcase their talentlessness in a single work. One assumes that the three men were jesting when they described their collaborative method as ‘writing scenes on rolls of wallpaper and passing one pen between us’. Or maybe they were being candid. The play is flawed at every level. Narratively, the script is so dense that the drama can never achieve lift-off. Four brothers must meet and be reconciled before the fifth brother, suffering from cancer, expires.

Counted? County Hall, until 22 May The Real Thing Old Vic, until 5 June Voting is so irrational as to qualify as an act of religious devotion. The process involves a fabulous confluence of approximations. Candidates offer a pattern of promises. Voters select the pattern that most closely meets their needs. And though there may be only the barest overlap between the needs and the promises, the voters maintain a belief that their choice carries influence even after it’s been diluted in the choices of millions of others. It’s a miracle anyone votes at all. A new verbatim play, Counted?, examines our attitudes towards the process.

Porn — The Musical Theatre 503, until 1 May Posh Royal Court, until 22 May Here’s the rule. Provocative title equals lousy show. The playbill Porn — The Musical filled my heart with misgivings as I made the long trek south of the Thames to a venue at a Battersea boozer. The room above the pub was huge and empty, but the theatre wasn’t here but higher up, via a trapdoor, wedged in under the beery roof-eaves. A fug of lavender and sawdust hung over the creaking benches and the stage was the size of a card-table. As I took my seat, a furry insect expired in midair and landed in the retro hairstyle just ahead of me. A moth in a beehive. Then the show began and everything perked up.