Caroline, or Change, NT Lyttelton, London</br>Dirty Dancing, Aldwych, London</br>Faust, 21 Wapping Lane, London

The gospel truth

Tony Kushner's new musical, set in Louisiana in 1963, grapples with serious issues: race relations and religious tensions. Yet, as its UK premiere reveals - staged with polish by New York director George C Wolfe - Caroline, or Change also has its human protagonists co-exist with a rotund spin-dryer embodied by Clive Rowe and a washing machine personified by big-voiced Malinda Parris.

It's a barbed hidden joke here. Kept down in the basement of the well-to-do Gellmans' Jewish family home, the overworked white goods are in fact black folks. At least, that's how it seems to the low-paid housemaid, Tonya Pinkins' Caroline.On the upbeat side, peppy Motown songs are playing on the radio, fleshed out by a Supremes-style trio. Clearly, black musicians are making it in the pop industry. Great gospel harmonies are woven into Jeanine Tesori's rich score too, reflecting Caroline's faith. However, an angry drum beat and the blues run through it as well.

JFK has just been shot, undermining hopes of swift reforms to institute equality, and Caroline's friendship with Mr Gellman's little son, Noah (Perry Millward, excellent on press night), is not built on firm ground either. Though they mutually dislike his stepmother, when Caroline is instructed to keep any money the boy leaves in his pockets, conflicts open up, climaxing in racist recriminations.

Elsewhere, this show has its saccharine moments, maybe in a bid to appeal to youngsters. Also, its narrative developments can seem snail-paced. But Kushner is deliberately zooming in on a small personal incident, framed within the bigger political picture.

Pinkins is storming and somehow magnificently ordinary, a sour woman of great fortitude. Newcomer Pippa Bennett-Warner, playing her politicised daughter, is joyously confident. And it's refreshing to see this this almost operatic work, rather than another golden oldie musical, at the National.

Dirty Dancing is also set in Sixties America with allusions to Civil Rights protests. But essentially, this is about recreating the 1980s movie where Baby - a nice daddy's girl - has a summer-camp romance with her muscly, mamboing dance instructor, Johnny.

James Powell's staging has raked in £12m pounds in advance sales. That doesn't stop it being theatrically inept, with rushed short scenes and laughably bad, wannabe cinematic backdrops. Still, against all the odds, the love story still pulls you in. Georgina Rich's Baby has just the right gawkiness and teenage courage while Josef Brown's Johnny falls for her with very persuasive passion.

Finally, watching Goethe's Faust has surely never made its audience feel so radically like lost souls as in Punchdrunk's site-specific production. Make your way to Wapping Lane in the Stygian East End and look for a dilapidated warehouse. Once inside, you wander though a vast warren of candle-lit corridors, musty chambers and narrow stairwells. In fact, a whole small town, a pine forest and a corn field are hidden away in here, suspended somewhere between 1950s America and Hades. Silent figures gamble their souls away in sinister bars. Couples are glimpsed tussling in corners. In the basement, a requiem is blasting out as the young Faust, stripped naked, sits under a swinging bulb and Mephistopheles bodily slams into his lap, over and over.

I soon abandoned all hope of following any plot developments, never even crossing paths with half the characters. But director Felix Barrett's visceral dancers stop you in your tracks and the installations are fantastically eerie.

k.bassett@independent.co.uk

* 'Caroline or Change' (020 7452 3000) to 4 Jan; 'Dirty Dancing' (0870 400 0805) to 20 Oct 2007; 'Faust' (020 7452 3000) to 30 Dec