Top class acts

Jerry Hall, Trudie Styler and Dame Anita Roddick are among the impressive names who have been lined up to deliver Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues, just one of the new shows set to preview this week in the West End.

V-Day 2004, The Vagina Monologues

V-Day for The Vagina Monologues raises funds to prevent domestic violence against women and children. Oona King MP, Dame Anita Roddick, Trudie Styler and Jerry Hall are among the impressive names who have been lined up to deliver Eve Ensler's evening dedicated to that intimate part of the female body that previous plays have never reached.

Ladybird

The extraordinary Vassily Sigarev hit the headlines when he won an Evening Standard award for his arresting dystopian vision of his early life in Plasticine. The Siberian received more muted reviews for Black Milk, but has now returned with a piece about a young man who is partying it up in his father's flat before he joins the army to fight in Chechnya.

The Battle Of Stalingrad

This fascinating piece attracted a lot of media attention when it last came to the Barbican, as much for the story as for the show itself. The Georgian director Rezo Gabriadze started to work with puppets after being frustrated by the Soviet censors' control over the Georgian film industry, and discovered that they were a highly effective way of communicating. These puppets defied sceptics with a poignant evocation of this infamous conflict.

Notes From New York

This promises to be an invigorating platform for contemporary musical theatre from New York, featuring entries from Pulitzer Prize winner Jonathan Larson (Rent, Tick Tick Boom) and the Tony Award-winning William Finn (A New Brain, Falsettos, Infinite Joy) among others. The intimate setting of the Donmar will be transformed into a cabaret environment for this one-off gig, where connoisseurs can sample the latest songs from composers well used to setting both Broadway and the West End alight.