Our experts round up the best plays and musicals
CRITIC’S CHOICE Oppenheimer This is a triumphantly assured drama about the American physicist J Robert Oppenheimer and his supervision of the wartime race to build the atom bomb. I bought, tried and struggled with the 2005 Pulitzer-winning biography of Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin, overwhelmed by its megaton of info – but Tom Morton-Smith’s play BEST OF THE REST The Ruling Class James McAvoy delivers a must-see performance in Jamie Lloyd’s revival of Peter Barnes’s riotously peculiar 1969 assault on the English upper classes and their deranged tendencies. He has infectious fun as the charismatic holy fool, the 14th Earl of Gurney. DC Trafalgar Studios, London SW1, until April 11; 0844 871 7632, trafalgartransformed. com Taken at Midnight Fresh from rave reviews in Chichester last autumn, a justified West End transfer for Mark Hayhurst’s debut play about Hans Litten – the German lawyer who subpoenaed and crossexamined Adolf Hitler is fizzier and whizzier, harnessing the virtues of theatre, with a hint of applied nuclear science. As “Oppie”, John Heffernan is every inch a commanding boffin – pale, angular, debonair and arrogant. Yet we also see a man torn: as to whether he has achieved a justifiable end to war or a future nightmare beyond measure. Dominic Cavendish RSC Swan, Stratford upon Avon, until March 7; 0844 800 1110, rsc.org.uk in 1931 only to pay a full price later in life, once the latter had become Führer. Martin Hutson shows quiet dignity as lead, but it’s Penelope Wilton, as his mother Irmgard, who steals the show, striving to gain justice for Litten in the face of proliferating danger. DC Theatre Royal Haymarket, London SW1, until March 14; 020 7930 8800, trh.co.uk BOOK AHEAD The Life and Times of Fanny Hill Caroline Quentin stars in a new adaptation of John Cleland’s novel Fanny Hill – published in 1748 and banned soon afterwards – charting one woman’s fall into prostitution and then rise to notoriety. Bristol Old Vic, Thurs until March 7; 0117 987 7877, bristololdvic.org.uk