Menier Chocolate Factory
Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s 85-minute monologue and Paul Farnsworth’s immersive set deserve better than a Broadway museum piece text on the Breakfast At Tiffany’s author

Truman Capote’s core creative life was brief, peaking between the jolly novella Breakfast At Tiffany’s (1958) and the genre-influential “nonfiction-novel” In Cold Blood (1965).

Blocked by drugs and drink, he spent two decades not writing a soi-disant masterpiece, Answered Prayers, although magazine publication of early chapters led to ostracisation by socialites who found the novel not nonfiction enough.

At the Menier Chocolate Factory until 14 November

The Crypt at St Luke’s, Cork
Luke Casserly’s playful, participatory exploration of Ireland’s 10,000-year-old bogs involves touch, sound, taste – and an earthy perfume

Seated at a circular table covered in a mound of dried peat, writer and performer Luke Casserly might be presiding over an arcane ritual. When he holds a handful of peat in his hand and passes it to the small audience around the table, the initial air of solemnity dissolves into quizzical laughter.

A soundscape of birdsong and wind evokes the ancient landscape of bogs in the Irish midlands, where Casserly grew up. Part essay, part dialogue, this playful, participatory performance involves touch, sound, taste – and especially the smells of soil, moss and peat smoke, later presented as a perfume created by olfactory artist Joan Woods; a message in a bottle.

A trip to a museum becomes an unexpected adventure in a new immersive family show by Theatre-Rites and Factory International

The director’s immersive Southbank Centre takeover has vim and ardour in spades, if not complete coherence

You Are Here is an undertaking on an impressive scale: a self-styled “epic, one-off pop-cultural spectacular” involving immersive theatre, dance, music and a “cast of hundreds”, all directed by Danny Boyle. It takes up a hefty chunk of the Southbank Centre and sets itself a similarly hefty task: “reimagining some of the most vivid and influential youth and social movements that have driven culture forward since 1951”, the year of the Festival of Britain, when the Royal Festival Hall opened for business.

“Some of” turns out to be the operative phrase: there’s an awful lot going on, but even so, the sheer enormousness of its subject means a degree of selectivity is necessary.

Hungarian director Bence Vági’s latest work showcases a modern style of acrobatics where performers soar above as the audience wanders from room to room

Imagine an empty 6,000 sq metre warehouse intricately designed to contain 40 smaller performing spaces on multiple levels. On one side lie the fallen remains of Troy; on the other, the city of Carthage. At its dark centre is a labyrinth, and above sits the decadent realm of the gods, who are all too keen to interact with the struggling humans below. The look is steampunk dystopia meets Berlin cabaret.

Step through a black-curtained door and you are in a neon-lit bar where two men writhe, whirl and twist above you on ropes. Then climb a spiral staircase to a pool above which a goddess hangs by her hair and spins in a frenzy. Somewhere below a monster drags a woman into the labyrinth’s heart and the darkness devours her. Above, exiled Trojan soldiers pay homage to an imperious queen. One of her courtiers breaks away, chased by a soldier – with a few audience members in hot pursuit. There is no safety net, no stage: only viewer and performer.

The celebrated immersive theatre company has launched a new multiplayer stealth game at its headquarters in Woolwich, south-east London. Photographer Tristram Kenton was granted special access

Festive theatrical feasts serve audiences a slap-up dinner with their entertainment. But is what’s on stage as appetising as what’s on your plate?

In west London, a line of smartly dressed theatregoers on a street corner enter a building and walk back in time. We pass through tight lamp-lit corridors and arrive in a cavernous hall, with tables laid and lanterns dangling overhead. This is Charles Dickens’ parlour, where he has just finished writing A Christmas Carol, and it’s dinner time.

The Great Christmas Feast is an immersive production in which a three-course meal is served while a quicksilver Dickens (David Alwyn) narrates his ghost story about the perils of penny-pinching in the season of goodwill. Immersive theatre has evidently concocted a tasty festive offshoot that might suit those tired of watching yet another straight-up adaptation of the classic tale.