I rarely visit Milton Keynes Theatre without thinking of the libel it received in the diaries of playwright Simon Gray. Visiting in 2004 with his play The Holy Terror, he judged it “vast and ugly, inside and out”. This is a matter of opinion, with which I happen not to agree. On a matter of fact, however — “it probably does lots of pop shows, that sort of thing” — he was emphatically wrong.

The theatre does not do pop shows (that is, concerts) of the type implied by Gray, though it might sometimes stage a musical on a pop music theme (Buddy, say). Opera is more in its line, with both Glyndebourne and Welsh National Opera regular visitors (the latter in a few weeks’ time with Die Fledermaus and Il Trovatore).

Over the past fortnight it has experienced something of a coup by importing not one but two of London’s finest Shakespeare productions of recent years. First came the National Theatre’s Hamlet with Rory Kinnear — a one-time star of the Oxford student stage — and this week the theatre is offering Sir Derek Jacobi (above) in the Donmar Warehouse’s King Lear, which I review today on Page 44.

Both actors were hotly tipped for Best Actor accolade in this year’s Olivier Awards, which in the end went to Roger Allam for his Falstaff in the Shakespeare’s Globe production of Henry IV.

The Lear was the second I had seen in under a week, an unprecedented repetition, I think, in my reviewing career. Though I don’t introduce a personal note into my notice of the RSC’s production with Greg Hicks on Page 45, I felt it a special privilege to be present at this first major offering in the RSC’s stunning new home. My earliest experience of Shakespeare at Stratford was at Eric Porter’s Lear in 1968.

As a member of a school party high in the balcony, I hardly experienced the play at its brilliant best. Such young audiences were much in the mind of the RSC’s artistic director Michael Boyd when he opted for a thrust stage that places visitors in thrilling proximity to the action.

Mention of thrills reminds me of Declan Donnellan’s amazing Russian-language production of The Tempest — featuring a startlingly good opening shipwreck — which Cheek by Jowl brought to the Oxford Playhouse last week. With its all-male cast (but for Anya Khalilulina’s Miranda) it reminded me of Propeller’s Richard III, which I reviewed the week before in Cheltenham.

Curiously, this well-established men-only company has yet to stage The Tempest. But with so little opportunity for the cast to dress up as women, what would be the point?