Previewing this week

Minnie Driver and Friends' star Matthew Perry will no doubt be attracting crowds of shrieking fans for their West End debut in David Mamet's early work, Sexual Perversity In Chicago. Like Friends, it focuses on young Americans trying to sort out their sex lives, but unlike Friends it emphasises the twisted nature of such a process, asking why the sexually voracious Bernie is so disconcerted when his friend Dan manages to score in a library.

The Lady From The Sea

Ibsen's creative powers were at their height while Europe was going through immense turmoil, so it is appropriate to our turbulent times that he is undergoing a revival. In a week which has seen Ingmar Bergman's version of Ghosts at the Barbican, Natasha Richardson stars in Trevor Nunn's production of The Lady From The Sea. This opens the recently refurbished Almeida under the new artistic directorship of Michael Attenborough - which also boasts a sleek new bar to accompany its challenging theatrical fare.

Absolutely! (Perhaps)

The great Franco Zeffirelli returns to the London stage after an absence of 25 years, bringing together a stellar theatrical cast including Joan Plowright and Oliver Ford Davies. Liza Tarbuck will also be bringing her distinctive style to Pirandello's play about an enigmatic young married couple and their mother-in-law, whose living arrangements give rise to fantasies and theories among villagers who are desperate to know their secret. A typically Pirandello-style blurring of the lines between elaborate fiction and complex reality dominates this lighthearted version of the play known originally as

Richard II

Mark Rylance's season at Shakespeare's Globe takes up the gauntlet thrown down by the current turbulent political situation by dealing with regime change. The first play - in a series which includes Richard III, Dido Queen Of Carthage, and The Taming Of The Shrew - is Richard II, performed by an all-male company. Following on from his deeply moving Olivia in last year's all-male Twelfth Night, Mark Rylance takes on the title role. The rest of the season will be performed either by an all-male or an all-female company, except for Dido, which will have a mixed cast.

Henry V

Gird your loins for Nicholas Hytner's first production as artistic director of the National Theatre, which triumphantly brings issues of war to the fore. Hytner has cast the gifted black actor, Adrian Lester, in the title role, asking what happens when a charismatic leader goes to war for highly debatable reasons, regardless of the massive risks. Will Tony Blair's speech writers be attending the opening night, I wonder?