It takes a diva to send up a diva, and Judi Dench is divine as the self-dramatising centre of Noël Coward’s narcissistic comedy, in which the aptly named Bliss family prove that hell is one’s own people. It doesn’t really matter that Dench plays an actress of a certain age, nor that Peter Bowles, as her husband, is a mediocre novelist, but their professions bring out the worst in them and their children, admirably played by Kim Medcalf and Dan Stevens. Coward shows a family happiest when it is quarrelling, and turning its back on the world — in this case four guests, each invited for a family member’s selfish reasons. In spite of a masterly series of misalliances, Coward is too cool to give us bedroom farce. The after-dinner games of the second act are only a prelude to the mind games that Dench, Bowles and their children play with their visitors. This is no star vehicle: Charles Edwards, with the hair of a young Michael Heseltine, Belinda Lang, with the dangerous charm of Mrs Simpson, William Chubb, with the pomposity of John Cleese, and Olivia Darnley, as a rabbit in the headlights of the collective family stare, are equal players. Beautifully set and dressed by Simon Higlett in the lost-weekend world of 1925, Peter Hall’s meticulous production deserves to make hay at the Haymarket. Four stars

The Wolves in the Walls
Lyric Hammersmith

As well as being an entertaining piece of new theatre, this adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s children’s story is an exciting new departure for British theatre. This is the first show from the National Theatre of Scotland, a “virtual” theatre in that it has no building of its own, and exists only through the work it makes. Here, its artistic director, Vicky Featherstone, has teamed up with Julian Crouch of Improbable Theatre to produce an enchanting “musical pandemonium” that is a delight to the eye as well as the ear, and touches the heart. Told in an exotic cartoon form, the story is simple enough. This is a happy family, but father is so busy playing the tuba, mother making jam and elder brother with his PlayStation that they are oblivious to Lucy’s night fears. Seeking attention, she says that there are wolves in the walls, and in a magical transformation, these creatures, cuddly and menacing by turn, are realised before our eyes. It is a short show, suitable for seven years upwards, full of promise for the future. Four stars

The Royal Hunt of the Sun
Olivier, National Theatre

In 1964, at the Old Vic, the fledging National Theatre welcomed Peter Shaffer’s historical drama about the conquistador Pizarro’s assault on the Inca civilisation of Peru as something more ambitious than the narrow domestic concerns of most British writers at the time. Here was a modern Shakespeare, a bit of Brecht and, when the Incas came on in their masks and feathered costumes, a bit of Holiday on Ice. Now the mature National Theatre has the full resources of the Olivier stage, a cast of 33, a new score and every facility for Trevor Nunn’s revival to give spectacle its due. Shaffer’s celebrated stage direction — “They cross the Andes” — is realised in fine style. Yet, in spite of the contemporary echoes sounded by an account of the ruin caused by imperial invasion, the play is much smaller than it looks. It comes down to the relationship between Pizarro and his prisoner, the king-god Atahuallpa, who play an intricate psychological game, with Pizarro as the embittered, unbelieving father and Atahuallpa as the charismatic son. Neither Alun Armstrong, as the grizzled mercenary, nor Paterson Joseph, as the glittering Inca, has quite the magnetism to bring this off. Three stars