Royal Hunt of the Sun: total eclipse, please

We think it's really important that you can see your money up there on the stage; it's even better if you can see other people's money up there. That's what makes the National's £10 Travelex season so fantastic. You pay less than a trip to a West End cinema and you can leave leave in the interval without feeling you haven't made the most of your investment. Here's a great case in point. What you could see on the stage clearly cost the National more than the £10 we paid, but it was still rubbish so out the door at the interval. Now, a word needs to be said about the National's glossy programmes. Good value compared with what you'd get in the West End (and if you don't want to spend the couple of quid, there's a free piece of paper with a cast list on it), but would it really hurt them to put some production pics in there instead of rehearsal pics?

Period of Adjustment: 40 years on and still a turkey

40 years is a quite sufficiently long enough Period of Adjustment as far as I'm concerned. Written by Tennessee Williams in 1960 and this is still not a very good play. Still, it's always rather nice to pay a visit to the Almeida. Small auditorium and Ewan McGregor is in the bar (although this may not be the case every night; please check with the box office). The Almeida gives you a feeling that you are somehow a bit out of the crassness of the West End and in an enclave where everything is rather chicer and more intellectual. Maybe, but the programmes are still too expensive.