A return to the capital edges closer for the Royal Shakespeare Company, with its artistic director Michael Boyd reiterating his belief that the organisation will find a permanent home for its ready-to-assemble, travelling replica of its Stratford-upon-Avon home. The RST-to-Go, as it is fondly known, is a kind of flat-pack Ikea version of the company’s main house and has already been deployed in the US. Now all the RSC need to do is find a big empty London building in which to plonk it. One would have thought that might become an easier task after the Olympics Photograph: Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images
It’s not particularly unusual for the establishment to get all worked up by something that comedian Frankie Boyle has done (or more usually said), but this week the shoe was on the other foot. Boyle was the one getting hot under the collar with the Scottish government, after it passed anti-bigotry laws designed to stamp out sectarian chanting at football matches. Boyle branded the legislation as 'an attack on freedom of speech' Photograph: Brian J Ritchie Photography Ltd
One wonders what Boyle would make of goings on in Berlin, where the Schlosspark Theatre has come under fire for ‘blacking up’ a white actor to play an African American character in a production that tells the story of a relationship between two elderly men – one black, one Jewish. The show’s director Thomas Schendel claimed that he only cast a white person in the role because he had been unable to find a suitable black actor to take on the part. 'In Germany blackface is part of a theatre tradition that was never intended to be racist,' he told The Local newspaper. 'I tried to make a play about racism and ended up being called a racist' Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images
Back in London, Jesus Christ Superstar lyricist Tim Rice has waded into the great Olympics debate this week, taking up the mantle against his old collaborator Andrew Lloyd Webber, who had previously claimed the Games would be a 'bloodbath' for the West End. Not so, according to Rice, who is much more bullish about theatre’s prospects. And perhaps he should be, with the West End launching a new campaign to attract tourists to theatre shows and some canny programming emerging, such as the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s new production – the Complete World of Sports (abridged) that will run throughout the tournament Photograph: Anthony Charlton/EPA
The London international mime festival opened this week. Perhaps confusingly, it launched not with a work of mime, but Blind Summit’s puppet show The Table, which purported to perform 'the last 12 hours of Moses’ life on top of a table' (it’s not intended entirely seriously). Other highlights in this year’s lineup include the London transfer of hit Edinburgh show Translunar Paradise (pictured here), which (unlike The Table) is a wordless piece of physical theatre. The festival continues at venues across the capital until 29 January 2012 Photograph: Murdo Macleod
More innovative stage work, this time in the traditional surrounds of the West End’s lavish Theatre Royal Haymarket, which is playing host to a special performance by 30 injured and ill servicemen. Currently in rehearsal, the soldiers are working with playwright Owen Sheers – who scripted Michael Sheen’s The Passion for National Theatre Wales – to devise a play called The Two Worlds of Charlie F, based upon their own experiences of conflict and recovery. Two performances of the show will be staged on 22 January 2012 Photograph: Helen Murray
Finally, a farewell. Tomorrow night sees what is expected to be Mark Rylance’s last ever performance in the theatre role he has made his own: Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron in Jerusalem. Jez Butterworth’s play started life at the Royal Court Theatre in 2009 and is now on its second outing in the West End, with a trip to Broadway sandwiched between. Wherever the show has played, audiences and critics have been wowed by Rylance’s performance, and audiences in London have been camping outside the Apollo Theatre this week in the hope of securing a return ticket and a chance to see what has been widely dubbed as one of the performances of the decade Photograph: PR
