Theatre Royal PlymouthJames Graham's gimlet-eyed play gives both sides of 70s anarchism and shows there's still plenty to get angry aboutUnemployment is sky-high and a Tory government is ben…
After early success writing for the National Theatre and for Alan Partridge, Marber's career stalled. As he returns with two plays, he talks about how Lewes FC, Turgenev and an escape from c…
First staged a year after she killed herself, 4.48 Psychosis was called Kane's suicide note. As a new opera version opens, the team behind the play's Royal Court premiere look back " and her…
Spymonkey are sticking the knife into Shakespeare, by putting every poisoning, bear attack and stabbing on stageA woman lies on a tomb in a deathlike slumber, rose petals scattered all aroun…
His name may not appear in the credits, but the playwright has inspired some unlikely renditions of his great worksIn this 1940 episode of Dave and Max Fleischer's classic cartoon, the pipe-…
Whether his plays were performed on a whaling ship, up a redwood tree or by a burlesque dancer, the pioneers had a particular fondness for the BardIn May 1831, the French political thinker A…
Donmar Warehouse, LondonJean Anouilh's wartime tale of mistaken identity is given a witty, colourful update with top-rank comic actingMistaken identity makes for absorbing dramatic material.…
He unleashed a fierce 1984 and brought Aeschylus bang up to date. Now the Almeida's wunderkind is stripping back a Russian classic with actor Paul RhysSay what you like about his productions…
Theatre Royal, Plymouth James Graham rifles through period-comedy vignettes in this chaotic retelling of the life of the rocker turned serial parliamentary hopefulJames Graham deserves an ho…
From his birth in Stratford-upon-Avon to family tragedy, friendship with the monarch and success at the Globe, explore the twists and turns in Shakespeare's own storyOn 26 April, Stratford-u…
She's not just his fixer, assistant, co-writer and collaborator. She even picks the costumes and carpets. As Peter Brook revisits his epic Mahabharata, Marie-Hélène Estienne looks back on …
Scared at airport security? Anxious about ageing? Fearful your fallout shelter doesn't quite cut it? The artist Michael Smith has been reliving the horrors of modern life since the 70s " as …
Young Vic, LondonBarrie Keeffe's fable of three working-class men adrift in society gets an urgent update in Liz Stevenson's muscular, bleakly humorous productionA generation has been thrown…
Tricycle theatre, LondonThe team behind The 39 Steps are back with a multitasking troupe, plus more quick changes and tomfoolery than an entire run of Monty PythonIn September, Patrick Barlo…
Rio cinema, LondonA young cast bring verve to the history of a century-old filmhouse " but the plot gets lost in the dark"No point looking sheepish, darling," says the usherette, fixing you …
Two things are frequently said about Caryl Churchill: that she is the greatest playwright alive, and that she is one of the most elusive. While she occasionally discusses her work with resea…
They start as young as nine and wear costumes so lavish, heavy and painful some of them faint. As Chinese opera heads for Britain, our writer goes behind the scenes at its Beijing HQAn elabo…
Is As You Like It the first ever sketch show? The duo behind the National's new staging reveal how they gave it 'the wow factor'Who's the greatest Shakespearean heroine of them all? Cleopatr…
From Hamlet in Syrian refugee camps to Macbeth in Kolkata, the plays have a resonance far beyond middle EnglandIt is impossible to look at Sarah Lee's photographs of actors from the Globe th…
Shadowy presences in the wings, glimpses of long-dead performers … ghosts have long plagued the theatre. We descend into the bowels of the West End's spookiest playhouse " home to the fear…
Film-makers around the world have re-imagined the Bard's plays with staggering results. Here are five of the bestThe release of Justin Kurzel's Macbeth, starring Michael Fassbender and Mario…
The Ffwrnes, LlanelliThe audience becomes the raw material of this vital National Theatre Wales version of one of our oldest narratives An army straggles along the beach in improvised encamp…
Anti-apartheid hero, Nazi favourite, Bollywood inspiration " no other writer's work is embedded in such a variety of cultures, and today takes such different formsIt was a Monday morning in …
Basketball with Woody Allen, a hunting knife from David Mamet, hanging out with Groucho Marx … the legendary critic remembers half a century in showbizJohn Lahr has something to show me. U…
Michael Sheen's take on the Dane is getting all the attention " but could director Thomas Ostermeier's radical version blow it away?Thomas Ostermeier's production of Hamlet is a shambles " i…