Jacqueline Brunton and David O’Reilly star in a production that leans into the campest qualities of Ashman and Menken’s modern fairy tale

Plus: The Nightmare Club by Annie Graves; Taking the Long Way Home by Jake Hope; Our Pebbles by Jarvis; Hidden Treasure by Jessie Burton, and more

Bord Gáis Energy Theatre normally welcomes West End shows. It’s no small task to mount the venue’s first homegrown production, Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s comedy-horror musical

Theatre: On a hot first night, the cast of this well-oiled touring production has to work hard to win the audience over

Six is less the staging of a traditional historical musical than an indoctrination into the cult of the superfan

Eoin McLaughlin’s Once I Was a Tree gives the natural world its own voice; plus two fun titles from a new Irish publisher

Michael Fentiman’s touring production is deeply thoughtful in its approach to staging CS Lewis’s classic children’s book

Two doors up from the Gaiety Theatre a homeless man is stretched out on the footpath, invisible to theatregoers keen to get to their seats before the curtain call. Inside the ornate Victorian theatre Myra Hennessy holds a similarly supine position on the stage, her head resting on a bag stuffed full of her possessions. “Look me in the eye,” she says as she harangues an imaginary pedestrian who refuses to engage with her request for spare change

The author of the classic children’s stories left Belfast as a boy, but his homeland remained a powerful force in his imagination

Including The Gnome Book by Loes Riphagen, After by Pádraig Kenny and more

Armando Iannucci and Seán Foley’s production of Stanley Kubrick’s political satire leans into broad physical comedy

& Juliet creator David West Read’s TV credits include Schitt’s Creek but his passion for theatre propelled him to rewrite a Shakespeare classic featuring the music of one of pop’s top hit makers

A new stage adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s beloved novel brings the kinship of boy and beast alive in a triumph of theatrical storytelling

Theatre: This thrilling Cameron Mackintosh-Disney show capitalises on PL Travers’s original story, which has so much more to offer than the films

Fisher’s award-winning book for children, Fia and the Last Snow Deer, was inspired by the wilds of her Wicklow home, and her love of poetry and mythology