Ordinary Decent Criminal, Summerhall ★★★★★ 

The years between 1955’s The Ladykillers and 1964’s Dr Strangelove were the years of what Sanjeev Bhaskar recently described as "peak Sellers", a period when the great comic actor rarely seemed to put a foot wrong. Two Way Stretch and Heavens Above! succeed largely because both films feature Peter Sellers alongside talented supporting casts, his performances by necessity subtler and more nuanced.

It’s a greater accolade than a Nobel Prize for Literature – one’s very own adjective. There’s a select few: Shakespearean; Dickensian and Pinteresque. Add to that list, Wildean. 

Mac is in prison for a long stretch. He is calm, contemplative almost, understands how to do his time and has only one rule – nobody, cellmate or guard, can touch the photo of his daughter, then three years old, attached to his wall. Though he is a man who gets through the days with few problems, he solves them through violence. On his release, his only wish is to find the daughter who will have forgotten him. 

There is star casting, and there is casting the right star – not the same thing. The Donmar’s new production, The Fear of 13, succeeds in the latter category, in spades. 

I turn 36 this year, while living in London and rehearsing my new play The Fear of 13 at the Donmar Warehouse. The cast places a cake on my desk, covered in script pages and 10 pairs of handcuffs. I video the cake, the handcuffs, the singing actors – led by Adrien Brody – who have now broken into a sort of birthday rap. I text the video 5,500 miles to LA to my friend Nick Yarris, the man about whom I wrote the play, whom Adrien Brody is playing.

A young woman (Laure Calamy; Call my Agent!; Full Time; Her Way) is trying to pluck up the courage to call her father, who she’s tracked down and has never met. Her voice trembles, she can barely speak, she has to hang up. But finally she manages it. This is Stéphane, she murmurs. May I speak to Serge?

The notion of prison as a pressure cooker of human behaviour and emotions is hardly a new one, but it can provide formidable fuel for drama. It does so here in this ferociously gripping Danish series, which hails from the same production company as The Killing and The Bridge. It also boasts a forceful roster of acting talent, not least Sofie Gråbøl (aka Sarah Lund from The Killing) and David Dencik (from Chernobyl and McMafia, among other things).

You do not need to be Einstein to feel it. If the only dimension missing is time, 75% of a place’s identity can invade your very being, hollow you out, replace your soul with a void. It happened to me at Auschwitz and it’s happening to Samuel at Cape Coast Castle, Ghana.

Not at first. We meet him as our host, full of bonhomie, not just reading his script, but revelling in communicating his love of history to the tourists who come to the last staging post for slaves before the dreadful Middle Passage to the Americas. 

I know it rattles me, so I try to prepare for it. But I am never fully prepared for the noise.