Michael Henderson suggests

Theatre
 
It promises to be a wonderful autumn for London’s theatre-goers. Ivanov, Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of Chekhov’s early play, has opened the ‘Donmar at Wyndham’s’ season, to superb reviews. Joining it in a quest to bring the increasingly dowdy West End into repute is No Man’s Land, Harold Pinter’s 1975 masterpiece, revived at the Duke of York’s with Michael Gambon and David Bradley assuming the roles of Hirst and Spooner initially taken by the great knights, Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud (and, 17 years later, at the Almeida, by Pinter himself opposite Paul Eddington).
 
The Norman Conquests, the three-parter with which Alan Ayckbourn conquered the West End three decades ago, is being staged at the Old Vic. The major opening at the National Theatre is Oedipus, with Jonathan Kent directing a cast including Ralph Fiennes, Alan Howard and Clare Higgins in an adaptation by Frank McGuinness of the Sophocles tragedy. Also at the National, Howard Davies directs Gethsemane, a new play by David Hare.
 
Art
 
‘Blockbusters’ are tiring to do on foot, and often tiresome to contemplate when the real joy of looking at paintings is best undertaken in cosier galleries, far from the madding crowd. Yet it is hard to ignore the Tate pairing of Mark Rothko (Modern) and Francis Bacon (Britain). Nearly 40 years after his death Rothko’s work has retained its value (artistically speaking). Bacon, one feels, was overpromoted in his lifetime, and there is usually a price to pay for that, no matter what prices his work fetches. At the National Galley a major exhibition called Renaissance Faces brings together portraits from Van Eyck to Titian.
 
Books
 
After dealing with ‘last thoughts’ in his previous novels, Everyman and Exit Ghost, Philip Roth goes back to Fifties America for his novella, Indignation (which, as one reviewer noted, could just as easily be titled Ejaculation).