There are moments when you are watching playwright and performer Mongiwekhaya's I See You at the Royal Court that it feels like it's been pulled straight from a Kafka novel.

Ben (Bayo Gbadamosi), a black South African law student, has met Skinn (Jordan Baker) a street-wise white girl at a club and they are stopped in her car by two black police officers. Ben is bundled into the back of the police van and supposedly taken off to a police station for a breathalyser test. So far, so un-Kafkaesque but once he is there he is asked to sign form but isn't allowed to read what he's signing.  When he refuses he is documented as uncooperative.

It is the start of a physically and psychologically violent evening for Ben in which he is being punished for something that isn't his fault. I See You is essentially a play about identity. Buthelezi (Desmond Dube) who arrests Ben fought to overturn apartheid only to find that he has paved the way for a new, educated generation who seem to take freedom for granted and who can't even speak their mother tongue. He feels cast aside after his sacrifices and the horrors he experienced while fighting. He takes it out on Ben who was brought up outside South Africa and only speaks English.

Now this is a proper trailer (other theatre companies take note) and this is how you generate more excitement for Hamlet, well for me at least. Benedict who? Can't wait to see it in May.

Love nosing around back stage at the theatre - Simon Annand's The Half, a series of photos of actors in the half an hour before they go on stage is a permanent resident on the coffee table.

Curtain Call: A Year Back Stage In London Theatre is a new book - and the first of a series - in which photographer Matt Humphrey has been given access to nearly 60 theatre productions in 2015/16 to capture what goes on. Stars such as Nicole Kidman, Kristen Scott Thomas, Damian Lewis, Imelda Staunton, Mark Rylance, James McAvoy and Mark Strong all feature.

Have been given a taster and these are some of favourites:

James McAvoy, The Ruling Class, Trafalgar Studio. Photo: Matt Humphrey - Curtain Call (2016).

Jonathan Broadbent as Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Photo by Tristram Kenton

From the moment Peter Quince (Ed Gaughan) steps out from behind the curtain and says 'you'll have a great evening but it probably won't be this one' you know this isn't going to be A Midsummer's Night's Dream like you've seen it before.

Filter Theatre has added its own play within the play (within the play - "it's meta"), Peter Quince and the mechanicals are re-imagined as a house band but with Bottom otherwise occupied, a replacement has to be found. 

The key scenes of Shakespeare's story of love, jealousy and fairies are extracted and performed with disregard to the fourth wall, without any pretence that it is real and with a liberal sprinkling of popular references and ad-libbing.

Oberon (Jonathan Broadbent) is a Lycra-clad, asthmatic superhero or supervillain depending on his mood. He doesn't hide his in-vain attempts to fly although he does come up with one rather amusing solution.

Puck (Ferdy Roberts) is dressed as a Lyric Theatre handyman with a tool belt in which he also keeps equipment for sound effects. He likes nothing better than an excuse to take the weight off and swig from a can of Fosters.