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Liverpool Playhouse was once home to mesmerists, acrobats and all sorts of variety acts. A new show, The Star, celebrates the artists who knew how to make the audience laugh, cry and sing along
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Theatre needs to break free of its echo chamber
Lyn GardnerFuel’s Situation Room is a night of performance and debate prompted by our changing political landscape, but such events must reach out to include the voices absent from our stages -
This adaptation of CS Lewis’s collection of sardonic letters from a senior to a junior devil is excessively and noisily theatrical
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Glenda Jackson ruled as Lear and Harry Potter left the West End spellbound but a three-hour drama set in an empty cinema tops our critic’s pick of the year’s best theatre
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Michael Frayn excavates Chekhov’s six-hour drama, written when he was 20, for this bittersweet comedy about a schoolteacher torn between romantic rivals
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Kate Tempest felt the love as she rhymed and rapped her way through her new album, Let Them Eat Chaos
talking points
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Report Revolt at the Volksbühne
Philip OltermannThe Volksbühne, designed to bring art to the working classes, has its own workshop to ‘build things you cannot buy’. This curiosity shop of props is at the heart of the row over Chris Dercon’s appointment as artistic director -
Recent graduate Leah Harvey shares her experiences of being the only black female student in her year at drama school
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Times were tough but inventive, with fine work from old hands and female dance-makers forcing change
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The UK Jewish Comedy festival’s salute to the Borscht Belt comedy of Woody Allen and Joan Rivers is poised awkwardly between tribute and parody
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Now fronting a new documentary series on racial hatred, the Essex-born standup tells how comedy has been his salvation
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In her podcast, Cariad Lloyd talks to other comics about death, a subject that standups rarely deal with directly on stage
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The innovative outfit that cultivated talents such as Tim Key and Claudia O’Doherty is no more. So why, during this boom time for comedy, did it fail?
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The creators of the buzzy high school-set production talk about the dangers of the digital world for teenagers as their play hits Broadway
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As they prepare to stage Hedda Gabler at the National Theatre, Ruth Wilson and director Ivo van Hove discuss a character who is at once tragic heroine and conniving monster
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It’s the time of year that brings people together – whether they like it or not. Three playwrights explain why this is the season for tales of regret and despair
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In 1995, Mark Lockyer was appearing in Romeo and Juliet when he was overcome with anxiety, fear and paranoia, beginning a bipolar rollercoaster. Now he’s turned those dark days into a solo show – with tea and biscuits
from the archive
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24 November 1966: The choreography is silly-simple stuff, visually awkward sometimes but never requiring more than meagre technical accomplishment by its performers
series
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The Funny SideThe Funny SideBeth Vyse: A breast cancer appointment is like Deal or No Deal – videoWhat happens when you’re faced with a breast cancer diagnosis at 28? Beth Vyse was whisked off to Alicante and offered a chocolate box full of fake nipples
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How we staged ShakespeareHow we staged ShakespearePatrick Stewart on Shylock: 'I should have been arrested for overacting'Our How We Staged Shakespeare series ends with the celebrated actor explaining why he keeps coming back to the much-misunderstood role of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice
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Play timePlay timeBabe, the Sheep-Pig review – puppet porker's farmyard caperThis Dick King-Smith adaptation is a bit unsteady on its trotters but its merriment has some of the audience bouncing in their seats
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The funniest thingThe funniest thingShappi Khorsandi: ‘I had a dream Donald Trump got a lead role in Hamilton’The standup and president of the British Humanist Association on what makes her laugh the most
pictures & video
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The witches are Colombian, Banquo’s Ghost appears in Mexico and Macbeth’s castle is Croatian in this crowd-sourced version of Shakespeare’s tragedy, performed by schoolchildren from around the world
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Writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce and director Carl Hunter reimagine Shakespeare’s late tragedy in an otherwordly film set amongst the statues of Antony Gormley’s installation Another Place on Crosby beach in Liverpool
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Cursing and raging, Lear is admitted into care while he plots revenge on his daughters in a modern take on Act II, Scene 4 from Shakespeare’s tragedy
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The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah discusses his new book, Born a Crime, with an audience of Guardian Members
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Phoebe Boswell riffs on her conflicted attitudes towards Othello in Dear Mr Shakespeare, which co-stars Ashley Thomas aka Bashy
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London’s Roundhouse is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Revisit some of the theatre that was staged in its first wave of activity, from the late 1960s to the early 80s
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A Pacifist’s Guide to the War on Cancer is a new musical collaboration between National Theatre and Complicite Associates, looking at life with a cancer diagnosis and confronting its fears and misconceptions
you may have missed
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How Hetain Patel shape-shifted from Spider-Man to 'bad Obama'
Judith MackrellHe has aped superheroes, written over himself in henna and based a performance around his moustache. Now, accidental dancer Hetain Patel has imagined a post-presidential rampage -
The firebrand writer is a vociferous critic of the establishment but his new work is an RSC commission about Caravaggio. He talks about challenging audiences’ prejudices – and his own
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It was one of this winter’s hottest tickets but has been cancelled after one performance. The choreographer describes the heartbreak behind the scenes of his ballet
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How do you top a hit play about global politics? By tackling the end of the world – from nuclear meltdown to Brexit and Trump. The writer talks eavesdropping and honesty
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The one where Medea saves her kids Lost classics of Greek tragedy
Charlotte HigginsIn his new book, Matthew Wright analyses the remaining evidence of hundreds of Athenian texts that, packed with sex, magic and happy endings, would give a radically different impression of the genre -
As she takes on three Shakespeare plays set in a women’s prison, the actor reflects on her own time behind bars
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His performance in Twelfth Night was a critical smash – but how did he feel waiting in the wings? Rylance reveals all, while photographer Mary McCartney gets a backstage pass
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Damian Lewis performs Antony’s funeral oration for Julius Caesar from act III, scene 2 of Shakespeare’s tragedy
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Ayesha Dharker plays Titania, the queen of the fairies, in a scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream
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Adrian Lester performs Hamlet’s soliloquy in which the prince considers taking his own life
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Riz Ahmed speaks Edmund’s soliloquy from King Lear, in which Edmund reflects upon being an illegitimate son and plots against his half-brother, Edgar
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Samuel West speaks Henry V’s soliloquy on the night before battle, in which he reflects upon the public’s expectations of the king
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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
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JK Rowling tells of anger at attacks on casting of black Hermione
This article is 6 months old
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