“Would you like a veil?” asked a steward, offering a length of black gauze, and when you’re at a production by Birmingham Opera Company it’s usually wisest to say yes.

Fair is foul and foul is drab, gory and tricksy in Rufus Norris’s first stab at Shakespeare direction at the National Theatre, Macbeth.

That this 1948 Tennessee Williams play is rarely performed seems nothing short of a travesty, thanks to the awe-inspiring case made for it by Rebecca Frecknall’s exquisite Almeida production.

Theatre artist, political agitator, cultural advocate: Sir Peter Hall was all these and more in a career that defies easy encapsulation beyond stating the obvious: we won’t see his like again any time soon. He helped shape my experience and understanding of the arts in this country, as I am sure he did for so many others.

A long time ago when I was very young, a voice hidden deep within me whispered, "Don’t take anything for granted. Go and see for yourself." This little nagging murmur has led me to so many journeys, so many explorations, trying to live together multiple lives, from the sublime to the ridiculous. Always the need has been to stay in the concrete, the practical, the everyday, so as to find hints of the invisible through the visible.

The name will never trip off the public tongue. Millions watch his work - most recently his superb realisation of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. But there is no hall of fame for television directors. It’s only on the big screen that they get to be big shots. The difference with Peter Kosminsky (b 1956) is, although it’s the title he takes in the credits, he's not really just a director.

After the first preview of Mike Leigh’s play Two Thousand Years at the National Theatre, a young Guardian reporter accosted an audience member for his view of the play. The audience member gave his name as Nigel Shapps, his age as 42, his background as Jewish, and his opinion that it was one of the most brilliant things he’d ever seen. Much to Leigh’s delight, he was quoted in the paper the next day.

There is a distinctive look, feel, even sound to a stage production directed by Ivo van Hove, which is becoming rather familiar to London theatregoers after two cult hits, A View From the Bridge and Hedda Gabler.

I’m sitting in a rehearsal room in Manchester preparing an Actors Touring Company’s new version of Aeschylus’ The Suppliant Women, listening to a group of young women raise their voices in praise of “untameable Artemis”. She’s the goddess of virginity among many other things. In this play she’s pitted against Aphrodite, the goddess of union, love and sex. The competing claims are complex: retaining one’s virginity implies choice, control, autonomy.

In a few days' time, Ellen McDougall will become artistic director of the dynamic little Gate Theatre in Notting Hill where she is already an associate artist.