Mark Ludmon

Islands inhabit a special place in the imagination. For Shakespeare’s Prospero, it is a place for magic and self-discovery, while it brings out the savage

Ishy Din’s new play Approaching Empty opens on news of the death of Margaret Thatcher but, in the world of taxi company Kings Cars in Yorkshire, her

The Seagull is one of Chekhov’s most regularly staged plays, often revived in Britain and last year seen in a film version starring Saoirse Ronan

In Britain, we expect great musicals to have an epic sweep, tap-dancing through rollercoaster love affairs or striding through the crossroads of history. In contrast,

In the surviving texts of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, there are only two female characters – one has a handful of lines, the other is

According to playwright Joanna Murray-Smith, her research into Patricia Highsmith revealed her to be “deeply unlikeable, nasty, mean, cruel and narcissistic”. Much of this misanthropy

Before he revolutionised theatre, Anton Chekhov had a go at writing his first play at the age of just 19. Rejected for performance, it languished

After Shakespeare, Lauren Gunderson was the most produced playwright in the US last year, partly thanks to her finely crafted play, I and You. First

Hans Christian Andersen is responsible for handing down to us some of the greatest and best-loved stories of Western culture from The Ugly Duckling to

There have been some phenomenal productions of the classic Broadway musical Guys and Dolls in Britain, from Richard Eyre’s unforgettable version at the National Theatre

In Nick Dear’s 1986 play The Art of Success, he explored the role of the artist in society through the painter and engraver William Hogarth

All the chaotic energy of 18th-century London bursts onto the stage in the spirited revival of Nick Dear’s 1986 play The Art of Success. From