stage
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Josette Bushell-Mingo: ‘Nina Simone is my GPS’Acclaimed British actor Josette Bushell-Mingo on her political and musical heroine, Nina Simone
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Shock as Bolshoi cancels world premiere of Nureyev balletOutspoken director has been questioned in a criminal investigation that his supporters claim is politically motivated -
David Mamet’s $25,000 threat to theatres over post-show talksHouse of Games playwright says he will fine venues that stage discussions about his work -
Lloyd Webber backs Tim Rice in row over ‘political’ change to musicalAs he picks up a lifetime achievement award, Andrew Lloyd Webber reflects, in an exclusive interview, on his career and the censoring of a Dreamcoat lyric
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The gulf between rich and poor is vast and growing. Where will it end?The theatre director Trevor Nunn deplores growing inequality
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Available Light review – a masterclass in movementLucinda Childs’s collaboration with Frank Gehry and John Adams remains illuminating 35 years on
brexit shorts
talking points
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Dominic Dromgoole warns industry about prioritising younger audiencesDominic Dromgoole has said all audience is good for theatre and older people shouldn’t be pushed aside in the act of appealing to a younger market
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Mae West and the gay comedy that shocked 1920s AmericaMae West was taken to court for writing The Drag – a play about a closeted gay socialite that ended up banned. Polly Stenham, who’s directing a revival, celebrates the star who took a limo to jail
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Putin has a hot date as dance surrenders to orgasmic quivers and S&M taboosMarie Chouinard’s sexually charged debut programme sees dancers locked up like zoo animals then unleashed, while Vladimir Putin is taunted with whips – and made to dance with a Nubian Queen
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Penn & Teller's smug shtick and Sadowitz's twisted tricksThe American duo’s slick act shimmers with Vegas-style glitz, while the Scottish standup’s sleight of hand is as flabbergasting as his vicious jokes
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Good Mourning Mrs Brown, the cross-dressing hit’s live show, is so full of horseplay, guffaws and in-jokes, I started to feel like a gooseberryMrs Brown's Boys live? They'll need more than malaprops and mincing to thrill an entire arena
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The must-see standup of summer 2017: Daniel Kitson, Sara Pascoe, Rob Delaney and moreThe star of Catastrophe brings carnality, the elusive Kitson attempts to ‘alter language’, Sara Pascoe goes dating, while Hannah Gadsby goes out with a bang
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15 years of thuggish jokes and tawdry stereotypesIn a long-running tour, the supercilious standup brings back old gags, leaving a bad smell – and a loveless worldview – in his wake
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Nina Hoss: 'The left is in a state of absolute chaos – we have lost our way'When she was a little girl, the German actor used to sit in on her father’s union meetings. Now she’s directing her political fervour into Returning to Reims, a new play by Thomas Ostermeier seeking to explain Trump, Brexit and Le Pen
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'Rupert Murdoch? He has a weird kind of loneliness'Ink charts the sensational rise of the Sun and its unquenchable thirst for sex and scandal. Its playwright explains how he found the man behind the media monster
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Heathcote Williams obituaryPoet, dramatist, visionary and pamphleteer whose muse was fuelled by a witty and beautiful anger
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‘Theatre is in the middle of a big change’The Royal Court artistic director on risk-taking, role models and her latest project – putting women in the Dr Strangelove war room…
pictures & video
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Miriam Buether's stunning designsFrom a play inspired by Edward Snowden to an opera about Anna Nicole Smith, Miriam Buether’s stage designs always astonish audiences
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The sensational stage history of SaloméThe biblical sorceress dances across two of Britain’s stages this summer, in shows at the National and the RSC. Explore past versions of the story
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Northern Broadsides at 25Northern Broadsides’ ‘dark, austere and genuinely disturbing’ production of Richard III is staged in Hull this month as the company celebrates its 25th birthday. Its founder and artistic director Barrie Rutter revisits some of the theatre company’s greatest hits
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First look at Jane Horrocks' Manchester music dramaThis year’s Manchester international festival features a gig-theatre show exploring how the US civil war created a cotton famine which caused catastrophe for Lancashire’s mills
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Top teachers on stageA new production of Alan Bennett’s Forty Years On has Richard Wilson playing the headmaster. Take a look at theatre’s best school staff through the years
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Angels in America at the National TheatreTwenty-five years after it was first staged in London, Tony Kushner’s inventive play about the Aids crisis is back. The cast includes Nathan Lane, Andrew Garfield, Russell Tovey and Denise Gough
you may have missed
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The battles and beauty of Shakespeare's GlobeTo mark the Globe’s 20th birthday, we raid the Guardian archives to see how it has divided critics, sparked academic arguments, faced down political protests – and weathered the British summertime
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'This is just how I talk. It accidentally went well with the jokes'The big-haired, sleepy-eyed standup is an Oscar-winner, one of America’s best-loved comedians and ‘a car that has no gears’. Now, his deadpan style has won him a perfect role in The Emoji Movie
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Cush Jumbo on her raucous new play and The Good Wife's spinoffCush Jumbo is back home in Britain to star in Common, a wild drama about sex and murder in 1800s London. She talks about filming a Josephine Baker biopic – and her new friend ‘Mezza’ Streep
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The smash hit about the peace accords that's been scrutinised by 1,000 UN delegatesHow do you turn a grinding peace deal into a sellout show that’s up for seven Tony awards? Easy, says JT Rogers. Just violate your heroes – and stir in some Noël Coward
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‘In England, I’d still be the token black face on Mock the Week’The standup has always thrived on being a fish out of water – now she’s a US primetime star and Trevor Noah’s regular ‘Brexpert’
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Arts education is a postcode lottery. Britain must invest for post-Brexit theatrePoliticians talk up our world-beating arts scene — then cut the classes teaching children creativity through drama, art and music
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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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Riz Ahmed as Edmund: 'Now, gods, stand up for bastards'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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Eileen Atkins as Emilia: ‘If wives do fall’Eileen Atkins speaks Emilia’s lines from Othello, act IV scene 3. Emilia, Iago’s wife and Desdemona’s maid, counsels Desdemona on marital fidelity
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Joanna Vanderham as Juliet: ‘The mask of night is on my face’Joanna Vanderham performs Juliet’s speech from the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet
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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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David Threlfall as Prospero: 'Our revels now are ended'David Threlfall speaks Prospero’s speech in which the sorcerer contemplates the end of life – and the playwright, perhaps, considers the end of his career
Returning to Reims review – Nina Hoss is magnetic in poignant political drama