The Entertainer

The character of Archie Rice is a bewildering enigma, and it is hard to think that he seemed otherwise 50 years ago

Gilbert is Dead

With solid acting and quirky, detailed design this is a clever play; but it demands far more vitalising energy

Origin of the Species

Bryony Lavery has written far more searching plays, but this is an entertaining slice of feminist revisionism

Seize the Day

Kwame Kwei-Armah’s play chews over the difficulties facing a young black man who’s out to become mayor of London in 2012

Mrs Klein

Nicholas Wright’s play is fascinated by the relationship between psychoanalyst Melanie Klein and her daughter Melitta

Pains of Youth

Pains of Youth closely examines the psychological forces driving this fatalistically resigned interwar generation

Why has Bill Bailey written a guide to the orchestra?

Bill Bailey’s Guide to the Orchestra is an attempt to harmonise genial fun with serious musicology

Pains of Youth

Katie Mitchell’s production is, among other things, a kind of psychological thriller: who will make it to adulthood?

Time and place: Paul Higgins

The actor and playwright, 45, loved going to school at a seminary with ‘action men’ priests – but then he met a girl

Life in the fast lane with Theatre Jezebel

Pick of the week: Autobahn, Tron Theatre, Glasgow, Tues-Sat

Wendy Houstoun

Houstoun seems to be showing us that dance is not necessarily reserved for the young: she is a survivor no matter what the odds

The Rite of Spring

In a shocking sequence the men, trousers down, roll in the earth, thrusting against it as if trying to penetrate the soil

Rambert celebrates Charles Darwin

Confusion is rife in Rambert's revolutionary Sadler's Wells premiere, but Mark Morris serves up a powerful treat

Royal Ballet at Covent Garden

Limen, the latest premiere for the choreographer Wayne McGregor, is full of unsettling dark emotion and sexual energy

Rambert

There is no doubting the sophistication of Henri Oguike’s Tread Softly, his first creation for Rambert

Michael Keegan-Dolan and the Rite of Spring

At English National Opera the Irish choreographer is giving Stravinsky’s masterpiece a radical makeover

Mark Morris: a garden of earthly delights

Mark Morris returns to the Wells on glorious form, while choreograoher Christopher Wheeldon adds a touch of mystery

Mark Morris

The second programme from the Mark Morris Dance Group is as magical and amazing as the first because every aspect works so harmoniously

Diary: Mark Baldwin, artistic director of Rambert Dance Company

On flirting, birds and the tango

Mark Morris Dance Group

There are no sets because none is needed: this is dance that totally — gloriously — speaks for itself

Bad Boys: tenors play lovers; basses play villains

Bryn Terfel is now far more than a singer. He’s a national institution, at least in the land of his fathers

L’assedio di Calais

This is a show that no Donizetti-fancier will want to miss

Duke Bluebeard’s Castle

Daniel Kramer has reconceived Bartók’s masterpiece as a gratuitous anthem to serial killers, rapists and paedophiles

Artaxerxes and Italian Girl

A rare Thomas Arne work is superbly reconstructed at the ROH, and an Italian Girl is a hit for Scottish opera

Three stars for Renee Fleming at Festival Hall

It was a more compact display than her last London recital, but lustre there still was, and the gleam of star power