stage
-
With his troubled air and tousled hair, the actor has made his name with anguished characters. Now on Broadway in The Crucible, he talks about coming out and why actors need to keep their private lives mysterious
-
Judi Dench! Eddie Izzard! Cyndi Lauper! The toast of theatreland arrive at the Royal Opera House in London – and everyone just wants to have fun
-
Jean-Luc Choplin, the Châtelet’s director, gave a high-art gloss to popular Broadway shows
-
It foreshadowed Romeo and Juliet and inspired Eric Clapton’s ‘most powerful’ song, so how will the love story Layla and Majnun play as a musical?
-
‘The best argument anyone has yet made for the continued necessity of the theatre,’ according to one US critic. As The Flick premieres in the UK, Annie Baker talks about art, awkwardness and bubble tea
-
Joanna Vanderham performs Juliet’s speech from the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet
-
Roger Allam performs a speech from the tragedy in which the ageing king curses the weather and his daughters
-
Camille O’Sullivan plays Constance in King John, who laments the loss of her son, Arthur, but disputes the suggestion that she has gone mad
-
David Morrissey speaks the opening lines from Richard III in which the scheming Richard lays out his plan to turn his brothers, Clarence and the newly enthroned King Edward IV, against each other
-
Daniel Mays speaks Macbeth’s lines from Act II, Scene 1, in which he sees a murder weapon in a hallucination
-
Adrian Lester performs Hamlet’s soliloquy in which the prince considers taking his own life
talking points
-
Budget cuts, rising travel costs – it’s tough for critics to get to plays in remote areas but let’s not bolster the idea that regional theatre cannot compete
-
Scottish independence? In theatre, it's long-established
Matthew LentonDiverse and democratic, theatre in Scotland is largely unburdened by the class system that defines the arts in England. It is outward-looking, internationalist and keen to cross borders -
Secret shows, street protests, satire … performance has long been connected to political causes. But does it have mass impact beyond a grassroots level?
-
Main goal of first white paper on culture in more than 50 years is to improve access for people of all backgrounds, Ed Vaizey says
-
Forget regular clubbing. A hidden social network of nights where anyone can salsa, swing or tango is waiting to welcome you – but who’s on the dancefloor?
-
The Essex comic’s new dad routine wins no prizes for originality, but there is still more material in two hours than many fit into a decade
-
The creator of It’s Garry Shandling’s Show and The Larry Sanders Show gave US comedy two of its most original series and influenced everyone from Judd Apatow to Larry David and Ricky Gervais
-
Fielding found mainstream fame in the UK as part of surrealist duo The Mighty Boosh, but didn’t crack the US. Will he find a home with Tim and Eric fans?
-
Should comedians stand up for a political party?
Brian LoganPolitics is fertile ground for comics, but there are pitfalls to jumping on particular bandwagons – not least when it questions their loyalty to the punchline
-
London’s powerhouse of new writing is celebrating its 60th birthday. Explore some of its key productions through extracts from our archive, alongside new recollections from Wole Soyinka, Ann Jellicoe, Amanda Redman, Sally Hawkins and others
-
The Comedy of Errors features not one but two sets of identical twins who, if they don’t look alike, must at least act the part. The National Theatre’s Wendy Spon explains the challenge of finding the right actors for Shakespeare’s plays
-
With Hungry, the first in a planned election-year trilogy opening at New York’s Public Theater, Trump’s rise is a dubious gift: ‘I’m a citizen before I’m a writer’
-
The director, who has brought Bret Easton Ellis’s novel to Broadway, explains why he’s drawn to the dark stories of Patrick Bateman, Faustus and Macbeth
polls & quizzes
-
Here are 10 striking stage directions – can you identify the plays they're taken from?
-
Sometimes the description of a character in the stage directions says as much as lines of dialogue. Do you recognise these eight figures as described by the playwrights who created them?
-
Many of Shakespeare's lines are used in daily life – but do you know which plays feature these popular expressions?
-
Are you a titan of the theatre or have the fates abandoned you? As the Almeida puts on a festival inspired by Dionysus, test your knowledge of Greek drama
from the archive
-
Three women, two dresses, one lesson about the politics of fashion. Vanessa Kirby, Pippa Bennett-Warner and Lucy Ellinson star in a microplay made after a conversation with Hadley Freeman
pictures & video
-
In a dystopian near-future, Brutus (Mark Stanley, Game of Thrones) and his conspirators plot Caesar’s demise
-
Images like the myriad white balloons in Tom Scutt’s design for Constellations have left their mark on audiences. Here, he talks through six shows from his career
-
Poet and illustrator Laura Dockrill’s contemporary take on Romeo and Juliet is set on a windswept English beach, where ‘two houses, both alike in common crime’ wage an ice-cream war
you may have missed
-
Bristol Old Vic
Richard Eyre rushes through Eugene O’Neill’s masterpiece but gets to the heart of the tortured love of the Tyrones, played mesmerisingly by his leads -
popular
Olivier awards Judi Dench wins record eighth Olivier award
Who won what Olivier awards 2016 – the full list of winners