Kafka's Monkey (Home, Manchester)

Kathryn Hunter; photographed by Tristram Kenton

Mankind has always been fascinated with trying to find a way to "talk to the animals". We are a species of Dr Dolittles, forever trying to make ourselves understood by our pets, or on a more scientific level, trying to forge a bond between ourselves and our ape cousins. Because, rather arrogantly, we think it would be best if we could communicate with them, probably with a morally ambiguous means to an end.

Kafka's Monkey is an adaptation of Franz Kafka's 1917 short story A Report to an Academy, in which an ape, which has learnt to behave like a human, describes his transformation and tries to relate his feelings on the matter.

This is a one-woman (or should that be one-ape?) show in which the remarkable talent of Kathryn Hunter is slap-bang in the spotlight for almost an hour. She portrays Red Peter, an ape which has been injured and captured by hunters in the West African jungle and brought to Europe. It is Red Peter's imprisonment, inside a cage aboard the ship during the voyage to Europe, that forces him to try and copy his human captors, to try and become one of them.

5 Soldiers: The Body is the Frontline (Home from Home, Manchester)

Note: Although this production was promoted by Home, it actually took place in the more fitting location of Rusholme Army Reserve Centre, Manchester.

The human body really is the front line in almost everything we do, whether that be warfare, weightlifting or washing up. What our mind wants to do, the body fulfils, and that is the theme for Rosie Kay's 5 Soldiers, which looks at how the human body remains essential to war, even in the 21st century when we have missiles, drones and mines to do our dirtiest work remotely.

The choreography starts off as militaristic, regimented, stiff and repetitive, but that's because activities such as drilling, marching and training are at the heart of every soldier's professional existence. Whether on a reserve army camp in the UK, or in the thick of the battlefield in Afghanistan or Iraq, a soldier's life is informed and shaped by everyday routine. That knowledge gives the soldier a template for his or her existence, and gives something to focus on amid the horrors all about.

The Funfair (Home, Manchester)

When you think of the funfair, you think of an assault on the senses - the sights, the colours, the smells, the noise, the surreal atmosphere of fun and laughter. And although this adaptation of Ödön von Horváth's 1932 play Kasimir and Karoline certainly has all of these ingredients, at the end of the piece I wasn't quite sure what I was meant to be taking away from it.

The original is set at the Munich Oktoberfest in Depression-hit 1929, but Simon Stephens's 21st century update relocates the action to a fairground and renames the title characters Cash and Caroline. There's no denying that Mike Gunning's lighting and Ti Green's set design are sumptuously effective, managing to be original and creative despite the over-familiar tropes and iconography of the setting. The huge, red pleated curtain acts as a cyclorama against which silhouettes are cast, and this provides some memorable visual moments, such as the one-horse merry-go-round, and the highly impressive zoetrope.