Be a drama queen

Want to be one step ahead of the rest? Catch these plays before everyone else and you'll be an official culture culture. Previewing this week: Oliver Twist, Beckett's Endgame and Julius Ceaser...

Oliver Twist

The Lyric's inspirational artistic director Neil Bartlett has adapted Dickens's Oliver Twist for the stage, starring Jordan Metcalfe in the title role. He returns to music halls of the 19th century to frame his vision of Dickens's infamous depiction of Victorian streetlife.

Calico

As a young man, Samuel Beckett was a very close friend and admirer of James Joyce, whom he could relate to as a fellow intellectual and writer far better than he could relate to women. Even so, he began an affair with Joyce's daughter, and Michael Hastings's play charts the relationship between the man who would become one of the 20th century's greatest playwrights, and the troubled Lucia. Imelda Staunton, Dermot Crowley and Romola Garai star in Edward Hall's production.

Endgame

Beckett's extraordinary nihilistic piece about Hamm and Clov, trapped inside a relationship where both are waiting for the world to end, now comes to the West End with Michael Gambon and Lee Evans. Matthew Warchus directs Gambon as Hamm, who cannot see, but devotes his time to bullying Clov (Evans) in a room only otherwise inhabited by Hamm's parents, who live in dustbins. Beckett was a fan of comedians in black-and-white films, and Evans's markedly physical comedic style may well equip him perfectly for this darkly humorous work.

Julius Caesar

The Menier Chocolate Factory Theatre is part of a new Southwark Arts Complex, and has emerged as an off West End venue. The Menier family were - according to its website - the family who democratised chocolate by introducing chocolate bars, but for this production, a less seductive political process is on display in theatre's most famous assassination.