Not quite full marks to Tanika Gupta for her ingenious wrapping of an adventurously different story around an Ibsen original in her play Hedda, directed by Hettie Macdonald (cont)

It does though mean Pearl Chanda can shine as a 1940s actress in London retreat from a successful career after hiding her Anglo-Indian heritage from a proscriptive industry (cont)

The difficulty is that exposition slows the build of emotional tension despite the efforts of a very good cast in which Rina Fatania is marvellous as a more-than-meets-the-eye maid.

No small task to encapsulate for stage the wide sociological sweep of The Line Of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst’s now classic novel set in the era of Thatcher and AIDS, but adapter Jack Holden brings it off with considerable flair (cont)

Much credit as well to Michael Grandage’s typically assured staging with designer Christopher Oram and to Jasper Talbot as gay aesthete graduate Nick, lodged in London with the family of a Tory MP soon to fall from grace (cont)

Among some excellent casting are Alistair Nwachukwu and Arty Froushan as Nick’s close encounters, Charles Edwards, Claudia Harrison and Ellie Bamber as MP, wife and daughter, Robert Portal, Francesca Amewudah-Rivers and Leo Suter.

An evening of young talents with the LPO and conductor Nodoka Okisawa Brighton Dome. Whoops of delight for 18-yeqr-old Leia Zhu’s first performance of Prokofiev’s second violin concerto plus Bizet’s Symphony, written at 17, and Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite

Given the gilt-edged casting of David Harewood and Toby Jones, expectations of Othello are high but some uncertainty in the tone director Tom Morris sets for his modern dress staging holds it back (cont)

No problems with the speaking. Harewood is especially strong and his Moor has dignity and authority which is disastrously shaken by his gulling. Jones, otherwise fine, is let down by moments which oddly seem to invite mis-placed laughter (cont)

Caitlin Fitzgerald brings maturity to Desdemona which adds an interesting dimension to the denouement in which Vinette Robinson’s Emilia is especially well played.

Work places have provided some rich pickings for drama and Hannah Doran’s Papatango prize-winning debut play The Meat Kings! (Inc.) of Brooklyn Heights is a really good addition to the genre (cont)

Skilful characterisation and knotty plotting combine as economic pressures on a small butchery business build competitive tensions among a disparate inter-racial and ex-con workforce (cont)

Director George Turvey and designer Mona Camille give it an authentic buzz with Jackie Clune as the owner and Marcello Cruz as a young immigrant notable among a first-rate ensemble with Ash Hunter, Mithra Malek and Eugene McCoy.

There are some impressive debut plays around at the moment but none more so than Mr Jones, Liam Holmes’s exceptionally well-crafted two-hander set in the shadows of the 1966 Aberfan mining village disaster (cont)

Interlocking a fictional story of young love with real-life tragedy, there is a remarkable deftness and depth to Holmes’s time-shifting balancing of relationships, humour and anguish (cont)

The acting is equally outstanding with Holmes himself as a talented rugby-playing late teen and Mabli Gwynne as his slightly older nurse friend. Michael Neri’s direction is nimbly animated.

A life coach facing legal action persuades his daughter to join him on a trip to their Irish roots in a self-converted bus and things don’t end well in Nancy Farino’s debut play Fatherland (cont)

Inventive stuff and Farino is strong on dialogue but everything becomes rather over-convoluted with the incision of the break-up depressed daughter’s dream monologues into the story (cont)

Jason Thorpe shines alongside Farino herself as the daughter and Shona Babayemi as a solicitor. Full marks to director Tessa Walker and designer Debbie Duru for rising to the staging challenges.

Ravel, Nielsen, Bacewicz and Sally Beamish in delightfully eclectic programming from the Dogoda wind quintet Brighton Dome plus Raj Bhaumik playing Penderecki’s clarinet solo and back with the ensemble for his own Don Giovanni duet arrangement.