It's all too easy to underplay the melancholy of Shakespeare's comedy of divided twins, misplaced – sometimes narcissistic – love, drunken frolics and a Puritan given his comeuppance. Tom Littler's decision to present the action in a very English Illyria during the years following World War II immediately sets the melancholy tone, but with pleasure bursting to make an entrance.

What do the cult TV show Squid Game and National Changgeuk Company of Korea’s Lear have in common? Oddly, a K-Pop producer, Jung Jae-il, who has created additional music for Lear.

More surely than any other London stage, the Globe has opened up our theatrical perspective on different languages. Its triumphant “Globe to Globe” 2012 season presented the Shakespeare canon in 37 different linguistic interpretations.

“When we hear the formula ‘once upon a time,’ or any of its variants,” wrote Angela Carter in her introduction to her Book of Fairy Tales, “we know in advance that what we are about to hear isn’t going to pretend to be true. We say to children: Don’t tell fairy tales!’ Yet children’s fibs, like old wives’ tales, tend to be over-generous with the truth rather than economical with it.”  

A recent Crime Survey for England and Wales estimated that 2.1 million people in the UK had been victims of domestic abuse in the year ending March 2023. So it makes sense that director Jude Christian has addressed this tricky, troubling Shakespeare play by amplifying the genuine trauma caused by Petruchio’s “taming” of his wife Katharina.

One of Shakespeare's longest plays gets gets served up fast and filleted courtesy the director of the moment Jamie Lloyd, who is second to none when it comes to revealing the hidden performance strengths of various (and very varied) stars.

There’s a fierce, dark energy to the Globe’s new Richard III that I don’t recall at that venue for a fair while. The drilled cast dances seemed more frenzied, and there are more of them, and for once let’s start with a shout-out for James Maloney’s musical score. It’s a thing of some wonder, ranging from jazz palpitations and wiry strings to the throbbing beats of intrigue that riff on the rapid action of the “troublous world” unfolding beneath the musicians’ balcony.

In Shakespeare's day theatre was regarded as "wanton" by those of a Puritan disposition who feared boys dressed as girls could engender wicked thoughts of same-sex love in players and audience. But such ideas are, of course, part of the story, especially in comedies such as As You Like It and Twelfth Night. Director Owen Horsley here celebrates the queerness rather than leaving it to the perception of the audience.

It’s an unhappy time to be staging Shakespeare’s problematic play, given its antisemitic content, so hats off to adaptor-director Brigid Larmour and actor Tracy-Ann Oberman for persevering with this updated version, now in the West End. Their ambition to make Shylock a female anti-fascist has been hard won, though.

Detective Chief Inspector Othello leads a quasi-paramilitary team of Metropolitan Police officers investigating gang activity in Docklands. With a chequered past now behind him, he has reformed and has the respect of both the team he leads and his superior officers. But his secret marriage to Commander Brabantio’s daughter, Desdemona, unleashes a stream of racist invective from her father, triggering memories of abuse that are never far from the surface.