stage
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What to see and where to goThe fringe programme is out today – so here’s a venue-by-venue look at some of this year’s highlights across the Edinburgh festival
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Titanic review – the best piece of musical staging in LondonThom Southerland opens his Charing Cross tenure with his brilliantly staged revival set aboard the doomed liner -
The West End’s preview practice dates back nearly 50 years. As it stands, the outdated system works against the public interestHarry Potter and the cursed previews: the opening of plays has become absurd
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The Go-Between review – Michael Crawford time-travels through songThis evocative chamber piece, based on LP Hartley’s 1953 coming-of-age novel, is done with taste and style but never quite soars
talking points
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Can the diversity Hamilton brought to Broadway last?Leslie Odom Jr said last week that despite Hamilton’s success, he’s still not being offered the roles a white actor would be. Will things ever change? We speak to actors and casting agents about race on Broadway
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Peter Shaffer wanted to make elaborate theatre – and he succeededThe playwright, who has died aged 90, was a commercial success, but his works could only have been created in subsidised venues
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Where to next for Sydney Theatre Company?Australia’s leading theatre company has been thrown into turmoil after the premature departure of artistic director Jonathan Church. Can it be saved?
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How theatre is moving at the speed of soundLong treated as a final flourish, sound design is now sitting at the heart of theatre productions – and new technology means it can make drama more tense and terrifying than ever before
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Daniel Mays as Macbeth: 'Is this a dagger which I see before me?'Daniel Mays speaks Macbeth’s lines from Act II, Scene 1, in which he sees a murder weapon in a hallucination
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Ayesha Dharker as Titania: ‘The forgeries of jealousy’Ayesha Dharker plays Titania, the queen of the fairies, in a scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream
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Zawe Ashton as Jaques in As You Like It: ‘All the world’s a stage’ – videoJaques’s speech about the seven ages of man from As You Like It is performed by Zawe Ashton
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Paterson Joseph as Shylock: 'You call me misbeliever'Paterson Joseph speaks Shylock’s lines from The Merchant of Venice, in which the moneylender reminds Antonio of the times he has insulted him
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Sacha Dhawan as Parolles: 'Are you meditating on virginity?'In a speech taken from the first scene of All’s Well That Ends Well, Sacha Dhawan’s Parolles stresses the importance of losing one’s virginity
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Adrian Lester as Hamlet: ‘To be or not to be’Adrian Lester performs Hamlet’s soliloquy in which the prince considers taking his own life
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Shape-shifting: 90 years of RambertThe mould-breaking dance company is celebrating its ninth decade. We trace the nimble steps that took it from a raggle-taggle bunch of students to global name
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The super-dry standup who swapped gags for banterHe was Flight of the Conchords’ bongo soloist and guest-starred with Louis CK and Garry Shandling. Now, Todd Barry has ditched his own comedy routines for a show devoted to off-the-cuff crowd work
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Fun factory: the finest comedy of summer 2016David Baddiel airs his own family’s failings, Bridget Christie grapples with a Motörhead vibrator, there’s a raft of improv – and Mr Swallow recreates Houdini’s finest escape
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Sara Pascoe: ‘My mum has heckled me’From Would I Lie To You? to the Kappa symbol, the comedian reveals the things she finds funniest
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It's the one time I'm confidentJeremy Corbyn, pervy sexual tension, tiny horned hamsters... improv comedy star Greg Proops is used to chucking anything into the mix. As he begins a London run of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, he reveals the show’s secret sauce
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Chicago scores a hit with Shakespeare and Leonard CohenTug of War, a gripping take on the history plays with protest songs from Leonard Cohen and Nina Simone, is rocking Chicago. The woman behind it says torture and invasion never felt more relevant
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Richard III? He's a rock star, a standup comedianIn the German director’s Schaubühne production, there’s a drum kit on stage, the princes are puppets and the battle scene features Richard alone in his pants
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A drag queen's heels and a miner's boots: show lets you walk a mile in their shoesIn the latest part of her ‘empathy museum’, Clare Patey invites audiences to put on a stranger’s footwear and take a walk while listening to the shoe-owner’s personal story on headphones
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polls & quizzes
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Are you as smart as the Elves who research QI's questions?The hit QI podcast No Such Thing As a Fish separates quite interesting facts from quite impossible ones. But can you tell which of these statements are true or false?
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Trivia, she wrote: how well do you know Angela Lansbury?Broadway sensation, TV detective and three-time Oscar nominee Angela Lansbury turns 90 in October. See if you can detect the correct answers in our quiz
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Do you know your Oedipus from your Antigone?
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
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Everyday Shakespeare
Many of Shakespeare's lines are used in daily life – but do you know which plays feature these popular expressions?
from the archive
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Kenneth Tynan at the Observer: his first theatre column
Sixty years after the former Observer drama critic began his column, we're revisiting some of his classic articles. Here's his first one, in which he reflects upon replacing Ivor Brown
pictures & video
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Ralph Fiennes as Richard IIIRalph Fiennes plays Shakespeare’s scheming king in a striking new production of Richard III, directed by Rupert Goold. Photographer Miles Aldridge, who followed the rehearsal process, talks about his dramatic set of backstage images
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'The Royal Court is where I found out who the hell I was'In this archive video, filmed in 2015, Alan Rickman remembers visiting the Royal Court as a teenager and taking Rachel Corrie’s parents to see the play based on their daughter’s diaries
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Vicky McClure unleashes hell as Lady MacbethThis is England star Vicky McClure is possessed by evil in this nightmarish manga take on Macbeth, the fourth of the British Council’s films for Shakespeare Lives 2016, a global programme celebrating William Shakespeare on the 400th anniversary of his death
you may have missed
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Kneehigh stage the Chagalls' romanceThere are few more vivid evocations of how it feels to fall for someone than in Chagall’s ecstatic paintings of his wife. As Kneehigh’s production about the pair opens at Bristol Old Vic, Daniel Jamieson retraces the couple’s story
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No Body review – choreography of light and sound