TODAY IN LONDON, TW’s tipped events feature April Fools Lucy Beaumont and Phill Jupitus (him, twice), magic man Ali Cook, solo dramatist Ira Brand, and a good old Alan Aykbourn stage-play…

COMEDY: Fools’ Week, Drayton Theatre, 1-5 Apr
Why limit April Fool-ishness to a single day, when you can make the springtime silliness last for five? Exactly. Anyway, getting this irreverently funny mini-fest started this evening are big-man-on-‘Buzzcocks’ Phill Jupitus and BBC Comedy Award-winning Hull girl Lucy Beaumont, with John Hastings, Angela Barnes, Milo McCabe, Carly Smallman and Alex Edelman all set to appear hereafter. Details and tickets here.

THEATRE: A Small Family Business, National Theatre, 1 Apr – 31 May
Alan Ayckbourn’s rowdy comic exposure of entrepreneurial greed and corruption returns to the site of its 1987 premiere. Jack McCracken, a man of principle, takes over his dad-in-law’s family firm, and finds in himself a well of self-interest which reaches a grim climax. Details and tickets here.

THEATRE: First 2014 – A Festival Of Solo Performances, Tristan Bates Theatre, 1-19 Apr
Starting tonight with Ira Brand’s ‘A Cure For Ageing’ – a piercing celebration of life and its inevitable decline – and, by contrast, all-star magician Ali Cook’s ‘The Art Of Astonishment’, this intimate array of one-man shows also has space on its programme later this month for comedians Grainne Maguire, Rosie Wilby, Ivo Graham and Shappi Khorsandi; moving theatre solos from Lucy Hopkins and Yuni Shin; light and heavier-hearted cabaret; and Phill Jupitus posing as Porky The Poet in his first longform prose show. Details and tickets here.