Wish List (Royal Exchange, Manchester)

Katherine Soper's Bruntwood Prize-winning Wish List is about "the system" - the system that controls us, the system we are part of, and the system we design for ourselves. It's a remarkable play which reveals its multiple layers the more you think about it, and it's no wonder the Royal Exchange/ Royal Court collaboration has been wowing audiences.

Wish List centres on brother and sister Dean and Tamsin Carmody, who live together in a rundown flat in Milton Keynes struggling to make ends meet. Dean (Joseph Quinn) suffers from an array of OCD and anxiety-related issues - he ritually gels his hair in times of stress, he cannot go outside in the daytime (or the night-time!), he struggles with talking to strangers or using the telephone, or even cooking for himself, because he has to run through a certain routine of tapping surfaces in order to move forward. Dean is a prisoner of his compulsions, but after inexplicably being deemed fit for work by the DWP, he has his benefits cut, and the siblings appeal the decision in an effort to prove that Dean is certainly nowhere close to being able to exist harmoniously with the outside world.

Into the Woods (Royal Exchange, Manchester)

Gillian Bevan as the Witch

The problem with Into the Woods is that it finishes half way through. James Lapine's story is definitely a game of two halves, and it's the second half which really lets down the first. This is a common complaint about Into the Woods, and there seems to have been little attempt by Matthew Xia, the director of this production, to avoid this.

And maybe that's because it's largely unfixable. The ponderous nature of the second half - which fixates on the nature of cause and effect, who's really to blame for the events of the first half, and the grander notion of destiny and responsibility - drags the production to such a halt that the magic of what's gone before is soiled.

Pomona (Royal Exchange, Manchester)

Every time I catch a Metrolink tram between Salford Quays and Manchester city centre, I'm fascinated by the stop at Pomona. It's an empty, soulless, despairing place. Nobody ever gets on, and nobody ever gets off. The tram stops, waits a few seconds, then continues on its way. Nobody is ever seen there, and there's barely any movement beyond tumbling litter and the occasional disorientated pigeon.

Pomona is a lonesome place in the heart of Manchester which seems to exist outside of normal reality. There's just nothing there, apart from graffiti-scrawled walls and what appear to be empty office blocks. And it's this same experience that inspired 28-year-old Alistair McDowall to write Pomona, which has won him a London Evening Standard Theatre Award nomination for Most Promising Playwright.

Scuttlers (Royal Exchange, Manchester)

When you walk into the auditorium at the Royal Exchange Theatre for a performance of Scuttlers, you enter a different world. The in-the-round nature of the theatre makes everything it stages immersive for the audience to a certain degree, but as you get your ticket checked for Scuttlers, you'll need to step over or past various young lads lolling about in the aisles, maybe incapacitated through gin or simply too tired from work at the factories.

This is what live theatre is all about, of course - taking the audience to a different place or time, immersing them in the world of the characters. The fact the actors stay in character before the play begins, and during the intermission, gives much more power to the piece itself.