This show is at heart a revival. Not of Shakespeare, because he doesn’t need it, but of a theatrical genre not much seen since the 1960s. Revue used to be a popular staple of the theatre and found favour as a more upmarket, slightly more sophisticated variety show, performed by a small company working with a thematic selection of witty and clever material. It was meant to make you feel better about your life. Above all it had to be funny.

Rochester’s is an irresistible story: the darling of the Restoration court, he revelled in the favour of Charles II. His life served as metaphor for the end of Cromwellian 17th century austerity. All the safety catches were off. Here was a man with education, creative competence, position, money and looks, but with just one hitch – he was acutely aware of artifice, and was hell-bent on bringing it down, even at enormous cost to himself.

Laurence Boswell’s production eschews all romantic accretions, opting for a Brook-like white box...

Although his first big hit was the comedy French Without Tears, Rattigan is best known today for serious dramas depicting the upper-middle class struggling with barely suppressed emotional conflicts. We certainly don’t think of him as a farceur. Nevertheless, the decidedly farcical While The Sun Shines was his biggest hit in its day and ran for well over a thousand performances at the Globe . . . Yes, it’s a period piece, but a good one. Thoroughly enjoyable.

To commemorate Anthony Trollope’s 200th birthday, Craig Baxter was commissioned by the Trollope Society to write a dramatized version of Lady Anna. Seldom read today, this is a conventional Victorian tale of a young woman of noble birth who must choose either to be wedded off to a young earl who matches her in social status but whom she does not love, or to marry her childhood sweetheart, a poor tailor. . . a very inventive and often amusing way of breathing new life into an old story.