Catherine Love: My top theatre picks for September

With the Edinburgh Fringe and the summer holidays now behind us, theatres everywhere are gearing up to deliver their autumn seasons. Many of these include Edinburgh transfers, the most high profile being the James Plays at the National Theatre. This collaboration with the National Theatre of Scotland premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival last month to uniformly positive reviews, and now Rona Munro's trilogy of history plays arrives on the South Bank at the end of the month. Theatregoers with stamina can even see all three plays in one day on 25 September or 25 October.

At the Soho Theatre, Richard Marsh's Wingman has come in directly from the Edinburgh Fringe, while audiences at Battersea Arts Centre have second chances to catch both Peter McMaster's all-male take on Wuthering Heights and the award-winning Backstage in Biscuit Land this month. The Lyric Hammersmith’s Secret Theatre company are out on tour with all six of their productions to date, the most recent two of which were just seen in Edinburgh, and 2013 Fringe hit Grounded also takes to the road in the following weeks.

As for the new, in London both the Royal Court and the Gate Theatre are kicking off their autumn/winter seasons in the weeks to come. The Royal Court introduces the theme of revolution with Rory Mullarkey's new play The Wolf from the Door, which imagines radical change via the coffee mornings of Middle England, and Teh Internet is Serious Business, Tim Price‘s fictionalised account of the birth of hacktivism. At the Gate, the Who Does She Think She Is? season begins with Adam Rapp‘s play The Edge of Our Bodies, directed by artistic director Christopher Haydon.

If the summer hasn’t delivered quite enough festivals for you, there’s yet another one coming up at Camden People's Theatre. For the second year in a row the theatre is running Calm Down, Dear, a festival of feminist performance. This year’s programme includes the return of Louise Orwin‘s Pretty Ugly and new work from Sh!t Theatre and The Ruby Dolls. Also in London this month, Alecky Blythe turns her verbatim technique to the London riots in Little Revolution at the Almeida and Cillian Murphy is back at the National Theatre in new Enda Walsh play Ballyturk. For the more adventurous among you, meanwhile, Shunt’s mysterious immersive show The Boy Who Climbed Out of his Face continues in Greenwich.

Away from the capital, the main attraction is Maxine Peake‘s Hamlet at the Royal Exchange in Manchester, which begins this week and has just released more tickets. James Dacre‘s new production of Cat On a Hot Tin Roof begins at Northern Stage, with later dates at Dacre’s own Royal and Derngate in Northampton and the Royal Exchange. In Stratford-upon-Avon, Maria Aberg‘s interpretation of The White Devil, following her brilliant take on As You Like It last summer, should be well worth a look. And finally, look out for Paines Plough’s fantastic Roundabout auditorium, which is travelling around the country in the next couple of months.