Malicious allegations against teachers are not new, as Lillian Hellman’s 1934 play shows. In the National Theatre’s production of The Children’s Hour (touring) a disgruntled pupil (Emily Watson), whose every word is clearly manipulative, alleges lesbian activity between two teachers, who also run the school. Hellman unfortunately takes half the play to reach the accusation, then has to race through public reaction, leaving only the final act to explore the psychological impact on the accused.

Erstwhile spartan Brecht director Howard Davies goes for over-production, with the unnecessary acreage of Ashley Martin-Davis’ blandly unattractive sets and music at key points somehow suggesting someone distrusts the play’s own emotional force. The central acting, however, is splendid.

It takes Clare Higgins’ Martha merely a joyous smile and forced tone of voice to indicate the sexuality Hellman goes on underlining for an act, while Harriet Walter’s Karen provides a contrasting happy, then wrought, innocence.

As social tatler turned penitent Amelia Tilford, Gillian Barge finds variety and character depth far beyond the part’s potential stereotype.

Women have a tough time in Howard Barker’s The Castle (touring and Nottingham Playhouse), this time predictably at the hands, and arms, of men. Scabrously funny, shockingly violent, peppered with X-rated language, this fine play shows how the men’s return from crusading destroys a feminist idyll, bringing paranoia and madness. Violence is symbolised in the ever-growing castle, no sooner built than it’s made redundant by new armaments. This virulent indictment comes up fresher than ever in Barker specialists’ The Wrestling School’s new production.

Paul Theroux’s increasingly dark Honduran river trip sees its main character Allie Fox through the growing wise eyes of his 13-year-old son Charlie. Genius or madman? John Constable’s adaptation of The Mosquito Coast (touring) opens up visual possibilities for David Glass’s company in its true planks and a passion production. Planks vertical, horizontal, tilted and whirling provide a repeated motif. Tom Hodgkins catches the easy power, and our shifting perspective, of Allie in an evening made compulsive through performances, set, harsh lighting and important sound score.

The Wizard of Oz (touring) will have undergone major cast changes since it was Colchester’s Christmas show - which is where I caught it. Sad to lose Michael Cahill’s exuberant Scarecrow, but the production has plenty to recommend it, from the black-and-white tones of the Kansas scenes to the energy of the crowd, and a scene-stealing Toto who is craftily engineered on and off stage at appropriate moments.

Meanwhile, Colchester itself is enjoying another week of a little gem, Peta Murray’s Wall-flowering (at Colchester Mercury), in which a long-married ballroom dancing couple, from knitted-cardigan suburbia, all pale greens and browns, describe and enact the tensions in their lives. He, brought up to feel himself extraordinary, has to come down to earth along with the rest of us. She, reared to feel one of the crowd, gets in with some conscious-raising female friends and begins to find new elements in herself.

What makes this a fine piece is its equal interest in both characters, the way there are no easy answers and how it shows basic lifestyle exerting a continuing pull. In other words, this a play about real people. Pat Trueman opts for a less bravura production than the play received at its British premiers in Leeds, but this suits it well enough, only occasionally letting the real-lifedancing metaphors seem self-conscious. Good performances from David Shaw-Parker and Sue Wallace.

Look beyond the big Shakespear’s in the RSC’s Newcastle season. Two unmissable shows are David Thacker’s Coriolanus with Toby Stephens giving another of his insolent aristocrats - games captain and warrior in one - and John Barton’s Peer Gynt, Alex Jennings superb as an Irish Peer who adopts received pronunciation in the wider world. The staging problems melt away in Barton’s tale-telling version, fluid, swift-moving and surprisingly comic. Unlike David Edgar’s Pentecost, a complex subtly constructed if at times bathetic look at the tensions within and around the new Europe.