Southwark Playhouse, LondonRob Hayes's new play is an impressive " and nasty " portrait of masculinity hitting the toilet bowlWriter Rob Hayes likes to sum things up in a play's title, as he…
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In our series to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, stage designer Rae Smith explains how she conjured up some fairytale magic for a landmark productionIt's a fascinating cha…
Watch out for Manchester's most exciting theatre-makers, Jack Thorne's The Solid Life of Sugar Water, the terrific Pink Mist and the Lyric's Evolution festivalIt's your last chance for Tippi…
As the lead in David Bowie's musical Lazarus, Michael C Hall felt the singer's death like an 'internal fist clench'. The former Dexter star talks about inhabiting the role Bowie first played…
The comedian on her teenage crushes, saying goodbye to Peep Show's Dobby, and how reading in bed is the new partying Your memoir The Actual One is about your 20s. Are you very different now …
As he arrives at London's Barbican to play an operatic serial killer, John Malkovich talks to Andrew Dickson about being back on stage, doing the Edinburgh festival for the first time " and …
Sharon D Clarke studied to be a social worker before becoming a doctor … on Holby City. Now she's an Olivier award-winning stage star, singing the blues in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. She ta…
King's Head, LondonThe conflict between black servants and white employers at the height of the US race struggle is explored in Paul Minx's taut, though narrowly focused playPaul Minx's play…
The actor on Oldham Street, Manchester, the magic of Slow Club, a friend's brilliant memoir, British feature film Radiator and Lemn Sissay's poetryJulie Hesmondhalgh is best known for her aw…
Battersea Arts Centre, LondonA traumatised war veteran gets out of his box " and into it " in a vivid new play by two-man company RidiculusmusIt is one of the best of phoenix stories. Last M…
Roundhouse, London Akram Khan dances what is likely to be one of his last roles in his supremely potent retelling of the MahabharataIn 1987, 13-year-old Akram Khan was cast in Peter Brook's …
This year, London's Royal Court will be rich with female playwrights, in a break from centuries of male dominance of the stage. Here, the artistic director and several leading writers set ou…
Soho theatre, LondonA genial Rob Newman rubbishes theories about the brain in his mindful new showSometimes I wish the word "comedy" were abolished. I can't be the only person who tenses up …
Ahead of the UK premiere of the Australian company's radical reworking of Monteverdi, director Yaron Lifschitz talks about the thrills, spills and storytelling power of circusOnce it was eno…
Now that Bob Mortimer has recovered from his recent heart surgery, he can join partner Vic Reeves for their 25th anniversary tour. Expect a homely British take on the absurdIt is the tour th…
A new play explores the plight of unmarried mothers in swinging Britain who were told that giving up their children was 'the best thing'"It's like being inside Darth Vader's mask," says Rach…
The new Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry winner on learning how to be a Scottish writer and why becoming the national poet saved her lifeLiz Lochhead is one of nature's talkers, askin…
Samuel Beckett was first a cricketer, and then a writer. His biographer James Knowlson recalls an avid sportsfan who turned theatre into an extreme physical featIn a letter to a friend in 19…
My wife and I went to the Almeida Theatre in Islington several years ago. Alan Rickman was in the audience (Obituary, 14 January). At the interval we went to the bar. Rickman walked in and t…
Over the last months of his life, the singer was able to shake off late career doldrums and, despite his illness, find a final creative surgeFor more than a decade prior to his death David B…
The Wire made him a star, but Clarke Peters has been singing, dancing and writing for decades. Kicking off our Edinburgh festival coverage, he tells Simon Hattenstone why he's going back to …
'Fathers should be neither seen nor heard,' runs one line in An Ideal Husband: 'Mothers are different'. The influence of Lady Wilde and other women helps solve the puzzle of her playwright s…
When we set out to make a show about the baroque horror of the capital's property problem, it quickly became clear that the result would be tragicomicHow do you make theatre out of the housi…
From DiCaprio's astonishing The Revenant to "tea and catastrophe" with Caryl Churchill and the Comic Strip's take on the phone-hacking scandal, here are this week's cultural highlightsFILMTh…