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The Latest Breaking News from Michael Billington

‘The snake fell out of my wig’: why Judi Dench lost her voice when playing Cleopatra

The actor recalls a terrifying moment when playing the doomed Egyptian queen during a 1987 production of the Shakespeare classic

The Guardian - UK

Letter: Desmond Christy obituary

Ian Mayes writes: During his days in local journalism he helped to extend the theatre coverage further into the Midlands

The Guardian - UK

The Merry Wives of Windsor offers strong evidence that Shakespeare was not its author

Letter: Derek Jacobi and Margo Anderson on how local lore and biographical specificity found in the comedy point to the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, as its writer

The Guardian - UK

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Oxford student productions of Shakespeare have a very long history of engaging professionals

Letter: And Ben Jonson was invited for a stint at Christ Church, Oxford, in the late 1610s, writes Daniel Blank

The Guardian - UK

Letters: John Savident obituary

Michael Billington writes: John Savident urged me to sharpen my prose style and improve my dress sense

The Guardian - UK

Michael Bakewell obituary

Radio and television producer who was head of plays at the BBC and steered productions of work by Harold Pinter, Alan Plater, Ibsen, Strindberg and Athol Fugard

The Guardian - UK

Glenda Jackson obituary: Oscar winner who spent 23 years as a Labour MP

Fearless, sharply intelligent and sometimes caustic, Glenda Jackson, who has died aged 87, “had a career unmatched by any of her contemporaries”, said Michael Billington in The Guardian. From 1957, she enjoyed huge success on film (she won two Oscars) and on stage; then, in 1992, she gave it all…

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Sex, violence and singalongs: how London’s theatre crowds forgot how to behave

From musicals to Shakespeare, performances of all stripes are being interrupted by booze-fuelled and up-for-a-party audiences. So is good etiquette a thing of the past? Nick Curtis reports

Evening Standard

Punched, insulted and excoriated in song … our critics on the artists who hit back

In a shocking attack, the ballet director Marco Goecke smeared dog excrement in the face of Wiebke Hüster in retaliation for her review. Yet it isn’t the first time an artist has assaulted a critic. Our writers share their worst moments

The Guardian - UK

The RSC’s work in schools and communities isn’t ‘subordinate’

Letters: This activity by the Royal Shakespeare Company is equal and integral to everything that happens on a main stage, writes David Longford

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