The Week’s guide to what’s worth seeing and reading

Showing now

Caroline, or Change at the Hampstead Theatre, London NW3 (020-7722 9301). Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori’s musical has transferred to London after a sell-out run in Chichester last year. Sharon D. Clarke is “extraordinary” as a defiant maid in Louisiana in 1963. “First-rate” (Observer). Ends 21 April.

Book now

The Donmar’s acclaimed revival of The York Realist, Peter Gill’s play about thwarted love between two men in 1960s Yorkshire, heads to Sheffield. “Not to be missed” (Independent). 27 March-7 April, Crucible Theatre, Sheffield (0114-249 6000).

Simon Rattle, the LSO’S new music director, conducts Mahler’s Ninth, as well as a premiere of Helen Grime’s Woven Space (19 and 26 April); and Mahler’s Tenth, with Michael Tippett’s The Rose Lake (22 April). Barbican, London EC2 (020-7638 8891).

The brilliant American humorist and author David Sedaris turns his attention to middle age and mortality in his new touring show, An Evening with David Sedaris. 10 July, St David’s Hall, Cardiff, then Cambridge and on until 25 July (www.davidsedarisbooks.com).

Just out in paperback

Home Fires by Kamila Shamsie (Bloomsbury £8.99). The lives of two Muslim families living in Britain make up the intercoiled strands of Shamsie’s novel. “Her prose is unfailingly elegant, her eye for detail acute” (Sunday Times).