Gangsta Baby is at the Hope Theatre

THE Kings Head Theatre opens in its spanking new, 200-seat venue in Islington Square with Exhibitionists by Shaun McKenna and Andrew Van Sickle, a modern gay romantic comedy about love, sex, happiness and freedom set in the San Francisco art world. When ex-partners collide at an exhibition, sparks fly and their new boyfriends are caught in the blast, igniting a series of comic crises involving a road trip along the Pacific Coast Highway that leads them to a mysterious hotelier and new beginnings. Jan 5-Feb 10. kingsheadtheatre.com/

• Billed as Beetlejuice meets Fawlty Towers, Brian McInally’s Triskaidekaphobia is at the Old Red Lion from Jan 9-13. When Janet and Alfie arrive at Borden Grange for their wedding anniversary late at night they are subjected to the hotel’s unsettling history by the morbid manager. What ghostly secrets lurk in room 13? Expect frightening tales, shocking twists and a stuffed dog in this spooktacular dark comedy. oldredliontheatre.co.uk/

• Cameron Raasdal-Munro’s Gangsta Baby explores themes of class, environmental issues, and how being shunned by a parent for being LGBTQIA+ can develop into internalised homophobia. Junior is a queer sex worker in Hastings suffering from PTSD. His life is plunged into further turmoil during a booking with a new client when his father Senior returns home. Why has his father returned and what does he want from his son? Jan 9-27. www.thehopetheatre.com/

• In Michael Hastings’ Don’t Destroy Me Sammy comes to live with his father and stepmother in London, 15 years after they escaped as refugees from Nazi Europe. But the young man’s eagerly anticipated arrival disrupts the secrets and settled ways of this rackety Jewish household and their neighbours, in ways nobody could have foreseen. Jan 10-Feb 3. arcolatheatre.com/

• Lowborn Theatre’s All Fur Coat explores the way the mainstream media chooses to portray working-class families. It follows the life of Archie, a boy navigating his transition to adulthood through the confines of his class, alongside his sister, Martha, and his mum. We see his journey to becoming a young working-class man, and his discovery of who and where his father is. Jan16-20. thelionandunicorntheatre.com/

• We live in a time of “Endlings” – the last individual of a species – caused by human actions. As species extinction speeds up, Strange Futures explore some difficult questions through quirky humour, new writing and physical performance at Camden People’s Theatre. Jan 17-18. cptheatre.co.uk/

• Tom Sparrow’s The Ending dips into the classic myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and describes what happens after. It touches on themes of grief, loneliness and love, and the questions we ask when it’s too late. Jan 23-26 thecockpit.org.uk/