The Independent Recommends: The Five Best Plays

Hindle Wakes Royal Exchange, Manchester

Spectacularly refurbished after the 1996 bombing, this theatre bounces back in fine resilient form with the excellent production which had to be aborted then. To 9 Jan

Martin Guerre West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds

It's third time lucky for this much-rewritten Boublil/Schonberg musical. In Conall Morrison's starkly involving production, it finally emerges as a tighter, magnificent show. To 13 Feb

The Invention of Love

Theatre Royal, Haymarket

Witty fantasia by Tom Stoppard on the twin passions of AE Housman: scholarship and an unavailable heterosexual friend. To 4 Apr

Copenhagen Cottesloe, National Theatre

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

The Boy Who Fell Into a Book Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough

Typically witty and ingenious concept from Alan Ayckbourn (above) - here wearing his children's dramatist hat. To 9 Jan