The Independent Recommends: The Five Best Plays

Copenhagen (Cottesloe)

Michael Frayn's profound and haunting meditation on science, morality and the mysteries of human motivation. To 27 Jan

The Tempest (Barbican Theatre)

David Calder is a magnificently querulous and authoritative Prospero in an imaginative RSC staging by Adrian Noble (below). In rep to 4 Mar

Kafka's Dick (Piccadilly Theatre)

Spiriting Kafka to suburban England, this uproarious romp by Alan Bennett survives some peculiar casting in Peter Hall's revival. To 26 Feb

Just Not Fair (Birmingham Rep)

Moving account by Jim Robinson of 18 years' wrongful imprisonment of the Bridgewater Four. Will be performed in rep with Wilde's equivalent prison testament, De Profundis. To 30 Jan

A Month in the Country (Swan Theatre, Stratford)

A conjunction of two great artists and cultures. Ireland's finest living dramatist, Brian Friel, adapts Turgenev's proto-Chekhovian comedy. To 20 Feb