As we approach the centenary of equal franchise in 2028, it is important to build on the rights that were won by the suffragettes, writes Helen Pankhurst

There was a proud Pankhurst in the audience in Leicester as Sylvia: A Musical Revolution began its national tour (Suffragette cities: blazing Sylvia Pankhurst musical hits the road – in pictures, 3 October). A blazing show indeed – and one that, 98 years after women gained the vote on equal terms with men, asks how much remains to be done, how to do it and how women can bridge their differences to advance their common cause.

As Sylvia Pankhurst’s granddaughter and Emmeline Pankhurst’s great-granddaughter, I honour both women. Their political paths diverged. I seek to reconcile their legacies through Centenary Action, the cross-party coalition that I lead, in a shared cause: dismantling the barriers to women’s participation, selection and retention in politics.

Charing Cross theatre, London
Büchner’s jagged masterpiece about a soldier’s descent is told with enchanting and stirring songs that occasionally defuse its stark terror

When Georg Büchner died aged 23 in 1837, he left behind Woyzeck as a bundle of papers that would be ordered and reordered for years to come, eventually discoloured by treatments used to decipher the playwright’s handwriting. His two dozen scenes, with a handful of extra fragments, form a tragic patchwork that is mirrored, in this musical version, by a similar number of stained pieces of cloth stitched into the stage curtains and by the 27 folk songs that thread the story together.

It remains the downfall of Franz Woyzeck, a desperate soldier sinking into madness who grows suspicious of his partner, but – as the first names of its romantic title suggest – the story seeks to better understand both characters. Büchner’s Woyzeck suffers from visions and hallucinations; here they are joined by traumatic battlefield flashbacks. Franz was a war hero, says Marie admiringly, adding a courageous backstory to Büchner’s downtrodden squaddie and suggesting that she sees a glimpse of Franz’s former vigour in the drum major (here named Varg) who brazenly pursues her. In the play, that leads to an affair, but the musical’s Marie fights off Varg when he attempts to rape her and it is the rumours of infidelity that accelerate Franz’s frenzy.

A musical about a drama group’s pilgrimage and reflections on activist art join an intriguing show about lost languages

In a Dublin theatre festival programme tackling heavy themes of racism, conflict and prejudice, Lourdes! The Musical (★★★★☆) promises something effervescent. Xnthony Ltd, the creators of Oliver Cromwell Is Really Very Sorry, have turned their lightly quizzical gaze to the French pilgrimage town – “a holy Blackpool, a divine Las Vegas” and a site of hope or desperation for five unlikely travelling companions.

Back in his home village in “Countryland”, in 2008, following a diagnosis of HIV that punctures his dreams of Los Angeles, singer-songwriter Matthew (Riain Cash) lends his star power to a parish drama group taking a musical about Saint Bernadette to Lourdes. Interweaving this show-within-a-show and the pilgrimage strands, Xnthony’s lyrics and Matthew Floyd Jones’s score blend pop, club beats and soulful ballads. Directed by Sarah Meadows, the supercharged ensemble joining Cash as, variously, a droll priest (Iestyn Arwel), a terminally ill mother and her transgender daughter (Nichola MacEvilly and Danielle James) and an eager tour manager (Molly Lynch) carry the music’s tonal shifts effortlessly.

Peeing in the sink he shared with Derek Jacobi, making a badger video with Brian May, climbing Everest with Alan Hinkes … as the great actor blasts into his 90s, stars celebrate his ‘loudness and madness’

Emma Thompson

Òran Mór, Glasgow
Blythe Duff and Mark Barrett are excellent as two people helplessly bound to each other in this bitter two-hander

The arrival of a first baby changes everything. It is not just the upheaval of fitting the child into your life: the shift is also psychological. Children become parents. Parents become grandparents. Responsibility and accountability move down a generation.

That is why, in Jonny Donahoe’s knotty, bitter two-hander, a man known only as Son (Mark Barrett) has called on Mother (Blythe Duff) after an eight-month gap. She is spikily indifferent to his appearance, here in her back garden where she is burning family photographs on a bonfire. Despite the frosty reception, he must persist.

Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
With a WWE-style wrestling match, playful eroticism and a fine cast including Hamilton’s Jonathan Groff, this is an exquisite production

‘To liberty, and not to banishment,” exclaims Celia to Rosalind, the exile who finds freedom in her disguise as a man. It is a key statement in Shakespeare’s transformative, gender-bending pastoral comedy, just before the usurping Duke Frederick’s court is replaced by the romance of the Forest of Arden. That big reveal brought a prolonged technical difficulty on the opening night of director Daniel Evans’ all-male production, which was paused for well over an hour so it could be fixed. The technical hitch aside, it is a ravishing staging, with stunning visual effects.

There is little comedy or light in the severe court, which contains an intimidating physicality to reflect Duke Frederick’s thuggery, with slaps, shoves and a magnificently constructed WWE-style wrestling match, complete with bunny girls keeping score. It is replaced by Arden’s verdant hills on Anisha Fields’ exquisite set, so beautiful they verge on the voluptuous. The black Elizabethan gowns of the court, Puritan-like but flecked with ornament, and designed by Colin Richmond, are stunning too, as is the chequered shadow-play of the early scenes, in Ryan Day’s lighting design. The breathtaking contrast of the switch between worlds is inevitably lost, following the long wait of the technical problem, but is nonetheless beautifully envisioned.

Bush theatre, London
Mei Leng Yew’s play veers between humour and horror as a young woman ignores her mum’s warning about big life changes during a ghost festival

With shapeshifting performances and smart, heartfelt writing, Mei Leng Yew’s juicily spooky romcom is a seductively assured debut about second-generation family dynamics, the all-in nature of a new relationship, and the internal battles of a young woman trying to work out what she wants.

You must not make any big decisions during the traditional Chinese Ghost festival, our protagonist’s mum warns, or else the hungry ghosts will get you. But Girl (My Neighbour Totoro’s Mei Mac) already has her bags packed to move in with her secret girlfriend of three months and nothing is as powerful as lesbians ready to U-Haul. Except perhaps a third-wheeling ghost with severe attachment issues, played giddily by Bridgerton’s Isabella Wei.

After a phenomenal decade-long run, the Cursed Child two-parter is being pruned. Will it still work? Our writer swishes her cloak, levitates her luggage – and hops aboard the streamlined Hogwarts Express

‘Silencio!” Two dozen tank-topped and T-shirted figures fall quiet, and look expectantly at movement director Nuno Silva. “If you’ve got a cloak, accio it now …” With that summoning charm cast, broomsticks are stowed, wands holstered, suitcases grabbed.

The Harry Potter and the Cursed Child rehearsal room – a creaky church hall whose Victorian wall clock gives a serendipitously Hogwarts flavour – is a near-permanent bustle of activity. A sound technician quickly re-sets cues on her laptop, a costume designer helps an actor into a suspiciously long pair of gloves. Associate director Nicola Samer is quietly running notes with a couple of the leads while the rest of the company preps for the next scene.

Riverside Studios, London
Andy Sandberg’s play gets off to an intriguing start before coming off the rails in spectacular, almost fascinating style. For all the wrong reasons, it’s hard to look away

It starts off with a car crash, and enters its own pile-up before your eyes. There is some initial coherence, at least: Dylan, the son in a filthy rich family, played by Netflix star Noah Schnapp, has killed two people while drink-driving and injured several more. His parents, at their Hamptons home, are hashing out Dylan’s defence with a hotshot lawyer. They deny he did anything wrong – “people died, he didn’t kill them” – and throw money at the problem in hope it goes away. All the while, 16-year-old Dylan plays Nintendo upstairs.

An original legal defence is invoked, along the lines of the poor little rich boy, suffering from “affluenza”, a psychological malaise in which a crime becomes the fault of wealthy parents who have failed to teach their progeny right or wrong. It is an intriguing setup with some parallels to the hit-and-run case involving teenager Harry Dunn and Anne Sacoolas. Its moral dilemma is promising, its echoes of victim culture resonant.