Because he dramatised power, Shakespeare never really goes out of fashion. Treatments of his plays do though, and the RSC’s Measure for Measure, a transfer from Stratford set in turn-of-the-century Vienna, feels distinctly slack. The backdrop is supposedly a city filled with refugees, artists, political movers and shakers and members of the upper-class and demimonde.

How do you begin to dramatise one of the most extraordinary conversations of the 20th century between two of its most charismatic and complex intellectuals? When the philosopher, and then First Secretary at the British Embassy in Moscow, Isaiah Berlin met the Leningrad poet Anna Akhmatova, it proved a transformational experience for both of them, though the political repercussions it had for Akhmatova were devastating. 

In Peru in 1985, Joe Simpson - then 25 - and his 21-year-old climbing partner Simon Yates were descending the remote Siula Grande, which was hard to get up but even harder to get down, when Simpson broke his leg. They both assumed it was a death sentence, but Yates gave him a couple of paracetamol, dug himself into a bucket seat in the snow and lowered the stricken Simpson down the mountain slope, paying out 300ft of rope, then climbing down and doing it again, and again, for hours.

Theatre can touch thousands of lives. But can it compete with the success of a bestselling book? First published in 1988, mountaineer Joe Simpson's Touching the Void has apparently sold more than a million copies, and it's been translated into some 20 languages. It tells the adventure story of how he, and Simon Yates, climbed the Siula Grande peak in the Peruvian Andes in 1985. Last year, David Greig's stage adaptation of the book opened at the Bristol Old Vic, and then went on tour.

It’s been 15 years since Cameron Mackintosh’s stage musical version of P. L. Travers’ Mary Poppins made its West End debut.

This is one play by Shakespeare ripe for tinkering. It's well nigh impossible now to take it at face value and still find romance and fun in the bullying: the physical and psychological abuse as a supposedly problematic wife is "tamed" into submission. And there have been experiments.

In a flowering branch of London theatre, Norway comes to Notting Hill with what's becoming revelatory regularity, thanks to the cultural support of that admirable country. Two visionary-searing Ibsen productions are now joined by an off-piste piece of performance art from the techno-innovative Oslo-based company De Utvalgte.

Actor Miriam Margolyes is a phenomenon. Not only has this Dickensian starred in high-profile shows both here and in Australia, a country whose citizenship she took up in 2013, but she is also Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter films. And a familiar face from television. And a voice on radio. The programme lists her 12 major awards.

It is 70 years since Willy Loman first paced a Broadway stage; 70 years since audiences were sucked into the vortex of a man trying to live America’s capitalist dream only to see his life crash and burn around him.