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Cultural Life: Carlos Acosta, dancer

The Diary: Jolly jihadi japes; Russell Brand; Rachel Getting Married; C4's new little chef

Observations: Amid the credit crunch comes a Hogarth for the 21st century
The art world of recent years has been indistinguishable from the financial world: GDP-sized prices paid for things now worthless, complex schemes to entrap passing capital, superstars rising to (and falling from) grace. It's lucky, then, that Adam Dant straddles both of these worlds, using his art to record the folly of the bankers.

Restoration drama: How Chekhov's home has fallen into disrepair
The calendar in Chekhov's house near Yalta in Ukraine, still shows the day in May 1904 when he left to go to Germany to die. But the wallpaper is barely holding to the walls, the plaster is flaking and mould is spreading. He moved to warmer climes because of his suffering with tuberculosis, the temperature is often six degrees below in the winter, colder inside the house than out. The first floor, where Chekhov slept and where his study was full of the paintings of Levitan and photographs of his friends, is unsafe and shut off. In Chekhov's time, the next-door property was, appropriately, a sanatorium: but the current next-door neighbour has been doing some heavy digging just outside Chekhov's walls and cracks are appearing. His beloved garden is damaged and the whole area urgently needs draining. Chekhov believed in progress feeling, along with Tolstoy, that electricity and steam were useful to man, but the electrical wiring in his house is now a fire hazard and the fire alarms probably wouldn't work.

The Tragedy of Thomas Hobbes, Wilton's Music Hall, London
Three years ago, the American playwright and director Adriano Shaplin told Michael Boyd, the RSC's artistic director, in a public debate, that Shakespeare was neither universal nor a genius and that the industry formed in his name was killing the contemporary theatre.

A Taste of Honey, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester
As casting goes, it was smart of the Royal Exchange to plump for Sally Lindsay to play the "semi-whore" Helen in Shelagh Delaney's shabby little Salford shocker A Taste of Honey. After all it occupies the same heartland as Coronation Street in which Lindsay created the local favourite Shelly Unwin, a fixture behind the bar at the Rovers Return. Now as the alcoholic, feckless mother of Jo, Lindsay is propping up the other side of the bar in one of several 50th anniversary productions celebrating the premiere of Delaney's uncompromising play, written when she was just 18.

Mormons to get 'South Park' treatment
They've tried noisy protests, consumer boycotts, and the odd act of minor terrorism. Now supporters of gay marriage have unveiled a new weapon in their war against the Mormon Church: satire.

Wayne McGregor premiere, Royal Opera House, London
Infra, Wayne McGregor's world premiere for the Royal Ballet, is full of changes. You can see McGregor trying things that are new for him, new for his dancers. It makes for a less finished work than his recent Chroma, with some rough edges and weaker patches. But there are always ideas here, and they're always going somewhere.

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Victoria Park, London
Titania, queen of the fairies, is peeved with Oberon, her king, reproaching him for spoiling her revels "by made fonta and rubdoo... to da wittering wind." Titania, you see, is Japanese. "The wigban holds you, and depressive verds!" cries Demetrius, the confused lover of Helena. "Have you a touch of bottleneck?" she asks with concern. They are French. Puck observes: "Two of what kindness mix of pork." He seems to be Indonesian.

Treasure Island, Theatre Royal, Haymarket, London
Here comes the holiday season's first posh pantomime. The American playwright Ken Ludwig's skilfully filleted account of Robert Louis Stevenson's imperishable adventure beefs up the friendship between cabin boy Jim Hawkins (a slightly over-age but immensely likeable Michael Legge) and piratical Long John Silver, to the extent of Shakespearean reminiscence over their shared devotion to Jim's dead father, and Jim's eventual donation of some of the treasure to the marauding fortune hunter.

Monkey: Journey to the West, The O2 Arena, London
Monkey's journey to the West has also been a journey south. Damon Albarn's Chinese extravaganza opened at Manchester's Palace Theatre, then proceeded to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and is now having a season in Greenwich. The latest venue, actually a massive tent next to the O2, is the best, and not just for the marvellous sightlines. The previous venues, because of the words "opera" and "theatre" in their names, gave too precise and perhaps limiting expectations of this show. It is a real multimedia experience.

Rambert Dance Company, Sadler's Wells, London
Some ideas shouldn't get past the drawing board. Rambert's new Eternal Light is horrifyingly full of them. Toucans and sparkly crosses jostle with flares and new-agey uplift. The dancers, poor things, stay taut and alert in a sea of waffle.

David Hare's latest play is 'anti-Semitic'
AS a close friend of Tony Blair, the Labour Party's former chief fundraiser, Lord Levy, was drawn into the tortured politics of the Middle East, the row over the £1m donation to the party by Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone and arrested during the cash-for-honours investigation.

Gethsemane, NT Cottesloe, London
The Home Secretary is stubbornly refusing to resign. Her husband is facing charges for dodgy business deals abroad and there's been a cover-up regarding their druggy teenage daughter, Suzette, which might soon be exposed by the press.

Monkey: Journey to the West, The 02, London
Wagner had a word for his ideal notion of music theatre, synthesising all the arts. He called it Gesamtkunstwerk or "total artwork". Now I'm just wondering what the Wagnerian term is for "total cack". Monkey: Journey to the West – the so-called opera/spectacular with a score by Damon Albarn (of Blur) – arrives at the 02 trailing clouds of glory and its own 2,400-seat tent. Having opened amid huge hype at the Manchester International Festival 07, alas this show already looks like hackneyed tourist tat.

Stage giants fight to save Chekhov villa
Leading British playwrights and actors are mounting a campaign to save the Crimean villa where Anton Chekhov wrote some of his most important works, including Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. The building is being allowed to fall into ruin because of tension between the Russian and Ukrainian governments, it is claimed.

Royal Ballet, Royal Opera House, London Rambert Dance Company, Sadler's Wells, London
Sometimes the unlikeliest people come up with the wildest ideas. Dame Monica Mason's appointment of Wayne McGregor – a cybergeek who grew up without going near a ballet class – to a post once filled by Frederick Ashton and Kenneth MacMillan might have seemed counterintuitive. But Mason knew success when she saw it. And Chroma, McGregor's last work for the Royal Ballet two years ago, was the most dangerously thrilling thing to have happened on the Opera House stage in years.

Keith Allen: The rogue rides again
Keith Allen, enfant terrible of the acting world and father of pop star Lily Allen, is making his West End stage debut playing Long John Silver in Treasure Island at the age of 55. Allen's love life, which has seen him produce six children with four different women, has been well-documented not least in his own book Grow Up, which came out this spring. Allen has most recently been seen as the Sheriff of Nottingham in the BBC's series Robin Hood, but the family-friendly baddie and well-known charmer is on edge. Perhaps it is in part due to a dry throat which is giving the actor grief in the preview shows, and which he soothes by popping Strepsils (and brandy, though not during the course of this interview).

Gethsemane, National Theatre, London
A Cabinet minister's husband is due up in court for charges relating to his "innovative" overseas investment portfolio. The Home Secretary's rebellious child is caught smoking dope. The Labour Party's chief fundraiser, a flashy former pop impresario, rakes in cash via "chance" meetings over chilled white Burgundy.

Online theatre: All the web's a stage
As dusk falls over east London, I find myself standing in front of a dingy, seemingly deserted warehouse. Despite feeling nervous, I venture inside. Climbing a set of stairs, I find myself in a dark series of rooms. The reason I'm here isn't because I've taken up cat burglary, but because I've been invited to experience an exciting hybrid of art and hi-tech entertainment.

Boris Godunov, Coliseum, London; Elektra, Royal Opera House, London
Out of the darkness comes the sound of a lone bassoon; then, barely discernible in the gloom, the floor of the stage seems to come alive. The people of Russia, downtrodden, Tsar-less, drag themselves out of the mud and raise their voices in a plea for deliverance. They sing to order, of course – the Boyars look on – but they sing with blazing conviction.

First Night: Gethsemane, National Theatre, Cottesloe
A Cabinet Minister's husband is due in court for charges relating to his "innovative" overseas investment portfolio. The Home Secretary's child is caught smoking dope. Meanwhile, the Labour Party's chief fundraiser, a flashy Jewish former pop impresario, is raking in the cash from willing donors via "chance" meetings over chilled white Burgundy .

Strictly a worldwide smash
 There was a defining moment for the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing during its glittering tango towards world domination.

Impressing the Czar, Sadler's Wells, London
In the auction scene from William Forsythe's Impressing the Czar, props and dancers are dragged forward and displayed to the audience. Agnes, the main speaking character, tries to keep control. As she harangued audience and dancers, I wondered if Forsythe was aiming for a Monty Python effect: absurd detail, manic action, surrealism. If so, it falls flat.

Othello, Lyric Hammersmith, London: Rank, Tricycle Theatre, London
When my cue comes, call me; Bottom's injunction has been adopted as a production note by Frantic Assembly for this blustery, bashed-about Othello set in a West Yorkshire pub with a pool table.

King Lear, Everyman, Liverpool
I've just seen Pete Postlethwaite in the foyer," whispers my neighbour incredulously. How could the actor – whose return to the stage where he began his acting career Liverpool has been trumping as the jewel in the crown of the Capital of Culture celebrations – possibly be mooching around the front door? It's not very king-like behaviour, but Postlethwaite makes a discreet entrance as King Lear, walking through the audience as those gathered on stage sing "For he's a jolly good fellow". A massive grey beard is what you notice first, then the narrow gold band round his head, then the brown suit.

Romeo and Juliet, on motifs of Shakespeare, Barbican, London
Mark Morris's new Romeo is both stripped-down and revisionist. He uses the first version of Prokofiev's score, recently rediscovered by Simon Morrison, complete with radically different ending. The settings are plain, the most macho male roles are played by women, and passion is almost entirely absent.

King Lear, Everyman, Liverpool Othello, Lyric Hammersmith, London Any Which Way, Only Connect Theatre, London
Has Rupert Goold bitten off more than he can chew? This red-hot director of theatrical classics has just had two shows running concurrently in the West End: his bold take on Pirandello’s Six Characters?, and Pinter’s No Man’s Land which opened last month. But did that leave him time to get the full measure of King Lear?

Mark Morris's Romeo & Juliet, Barbican Theatre, London Impressing the Czar, Sadler's Wells, London
And Romeo and Juliet lived happily ever after. While you digest that information, consider why a dance iconoclast who until now has avoided straight romance in his work would take on the biggest boy-meets-girl story of them all – a story, what's more, that has spawned many satisfying dance treatments already. What is truly baffling about Mark Morris's Romeo & Juliet, on Motifs of Shakespeare (the title chosen by Sergey Prokofiev for his 1935 ballet score) is not that he thought it might be a good idea to make known a hitherto unknown early draft of that magnificent music. It's that he turns out to be woefully not up to the task.

'Priceless' Shakespeare gift boosts Globe
 A US collector and playwright has pledged his "priceless collection" of texts by the Bard and other writers to Shakespeare's Globe.

The Barometer: Thespian heroes, Alice Glass and Katherine Jenkins

Could they really do 'Ben-Hur' on stage?
When Lew Wallace's novel Ben-Hur: A Tale Of The Christ was published in 1880, the 1st-century swords-and-sandals epic featuring chariot races, gladiators and the Bible became an instant bestseller.

Balletboyz 'Greatest Hits', Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
You expect a greatest hits programme to look back. For these London dates, Balletboyz William Trevitt and Michael Nunn found both a touch of nostalgia and a nod to the future. Ballerina Viviana Durante, appearing as a guest star, was a reminder of the Boyz' past in classical ballet. Laws of Motion, danced and choreographed by teenagers, hints at new directions for Trevitt and Nunn, as much as for their protégés.

Lucky Seven, Hampstead Theatre, London
One has to be suspicious of any new play that contains old jokes, such as "What's a Grecian urn?" (About two drachmas a day, if you must know.) But Alexis Zegerman's debut comedy overcomes these lapses to make some sharp points about television documentaries in general and Michael Apted's ongoing Seven Up! series in particular.

Council Depot Blues, Royal Court, Liverpool
You might need to brush up your Scouseology before seeing Council Depot Blues. With their ribald repartee and bawdy jokes, the lads from the Liverpool City Council Excrement Eradication Department aren't posh talkers. But, flying high on the success of Brick up the Mersey Tunnels and Lost Soul, Dave Kirby has drawn on his own and his dad's experience working for the "Corpy" in a play riddled with Liverpool's trademark self-deprecating humour, a load of farcical moments, a stone-cold R&B score and a lorra, lorra rude jokes.

I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Grand Theatre, Leeds
Even before it takes a shell hit, the chandelier is not the only thing askew in Orpha Phelan's production. The Capulets, in drab shades, are marooned in an anonymous war zone. The Montagues are represented as the attacking army. The only thing missing is a suicide bomber.

La Cage aux Folles, Playhouse Theatre, London
La Cage aux Folles on Broadway in 1983 was the first mainstream gay musical, as well as a landmark fusion of love story, show tunes, drag queens and feather boas. Aids was getting a grip, so writers Jerry Herman (music and lyrics) and Harvey Fierstein (libretto) decided to sugar the bad news pill with a big blast of gay men having fun for all the family.

To be straight with you, National Theatre, London Manon, Royal Opera House, London
I don't want to say anything," a woman says, "but... it's nasty." Her upper body is calm, but her feet shuffle frantically under her. The words in Lloyd Newson's To Be Straight With You come from interviews with people telling their stories, talking about homosexuality, race and religion.

For You, Linbury Studio, London Matilde di Shabran, Royal Opera House, London I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Grand Theatre, Leeds
Michael Berkeley and Ian McEwan's opera For You rewrites the Don Juan myth in the style of Holby City. Charles Frieth (Alan Opie) is a sexually incontinent conductor-composer. His wife, Antonia (Helen Williams), is a woman of peerless virtue but poor health. Her besotted physician and modern-day Don Ottavio, Simon (Jeremy Huw Williams), is a "simple type who prefers Vivaldi"; her nemesis, Maria (Allison Cook), a psychotic Polish housekeeper who, having failed to win Frieth's love with "Jugged hare or goulash/Venison or bream/ Pommes purées or sautéed/ Beetroot in a crust of salt/Figs in port with lavender ice cream", instead offers up a dish of dead wife on surgical tape tagliatelle.

La Cage aux Folles, Playhouse Theatre, London Love's Labour's Lost, Rose Theatre, Kingston Upon Thames
 It’s the intimacy, for starters. That’s what makes La Cage aux Folles – Herman and Fierstein’s joyously camp musical comedy, which was inspired by the Seventies film – such a fabulous West End transfer.

Mark Morris: 'Romeo must live!'
The story told in the build-up to the US première of Mark Morris's Romeo and Juliet last summer is good enough to bear repeating. The place was Bard College – no, not a homage to Shakespeare, but a distinguished liberal-arts school in New York State – and the time was two years ago, when Morris was receiving an honorary doctorate. Leon Botstein, Bard's president, asked him: "Are you interested in this original manuscript of Romeo and Juliet that we found?" Morris answered with what he intended as a quip: "You mean the one with the happy ending?" Replied Botstein: "How did you know?"

To Be Straight With You, Lyttelton Theatre, London
Lloyd Newson hates dance. At least, he hates its feel-goodiness and its inability to handle facts. He wants to shake people up, engage them politically, make them think – and to this end he has melded speech to the body in motion.

Roles reversed as play reveals truth about Maria and the Baroness
Fans of The Sound Of Music know and love its leading lady, Maria, as the sweet singing nun who wins the heart and hand of Captain von Trapp over her arch rival, Baroness Schräder.

First Impressions: Daphnis et Chloe by the Ballets Russes (1914)
 The important event of the evening was the first performance in England of Maurice Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé, conducted by M. Monteux.

The Word On...Alan Bennett
 Bennett's gift, and his reasons for it, draw attention to the indisputable fact that for millions of ordinary British people in the years between 1945 and 1980, state power was an overwhelmingly benign force... Those who set out in the late 1970s to trash that welfare state... and to disparage its motives and its outcomes had their reasons, of course. But theirs was never the only story about the evolution of post-war Britain. Joyce Macmillan (<a href="http://news.scotsman.com/comment">news.scotsman.com/comment</a> )

For You, Linbury Studio Theatre, London
For You, the latest collaboration between the composer Michael Berkeley and the writer Ian McEwan, has finally made it to the stage after its postponement last spring, when the lead baritone was forced to withdraw. Now with the substitution of the authoritative Alan Opie, making the repellent central male character very much his own, For You has been launched in London instead of Brecon.

Love's labour's lost, Rose Theatre, Kingston
Love's Labour's Lost is both a feast of Shakespearean language and the most symmetrical of formal comedies. Watching Peter Hall's revival at the Rose – its first home-grown production – is like visiting an Elizabethan courtly masque where everyone is on their best behaviour.

A fond farewell to the theatre that put Liverpool on the stage
It might never have been hailed for the lavishness of its productions nor the extravagant comfort of its seats, but few theatres can have produced an array of talent to match that which emerged from Liverpool's Everyman. For decades, the converted chapel building with its famous bistro – an early hangout for the 1970s vegetarian set – formed the backdrop to Bohemian life on Merseyside as well as launching the careers of stars such as Julie Walters, Jonathan Pryce, Bill Nighy and Daniel Craig. It was here that Willy Russell premiered Shirley Valentine and Alan Bleasdale honed his dramatic skills which were to culminate in the epic TV drama Boys From The Blackstuff.

Child prostitution: suitable material for a musical?
It might seem strange for the British Psychoanalytic Council to sponsor a visit to a musical. But, then, Brett Kahr and Lisa Forrell's Rue Magique is hardly a typical musical – it is set in a south London brothel. And Kahr, who wrote the score, emphasises that the show is even unusual among brothel musicals. "Sweet Charity, House of Flowers, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Irma La Douce – they portrayed the women as dance-hall girls or fairy-tale figures or American cheerleaders or saucy tarts. I think ours is the first musical to present the reality of prostitution for women and children." Indeed, its main character, Desdemona, is not only a prostitute herself but has put her 13-year-old daughter, Sugar, on the game.

Antigone, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester
We're all Thebans in Greg Hersov's audience-friendly production of Antigone. Urged to applaud the entry of Creon – a slightly glib, brown-suited politician surrounded by the military – the onlookers are swept into the action, almost ready to believe he is right to deny the traitor Polynices the ancient burial rites. But Matti Houghton's childlike Antigone has already impressed with her shining determination to honour her family whatever the consequences, so that we're not really swayed by the fawning chorus of elders – a motley bunch including a bandaged old man, schoolmarmish woman and smarmy chap in trainers.

Leicester: a new theatre and no boundaries
 A city with a population of fewer than 300,000 has just taken delivery of a theatre whose technical sophistication equals, and may even surpass, the National’s in London.

Peter Gordeno: Dancer and singer who had a starring role in the sci-fi series 'UFO'
In the late 1960s, when he was at the height of his fame as a dancer and singer, Peter Gordeno was cast in an acting role and propelled to international stardom as Capt Peter Carlin in UFO, the first live-action television production from the producers of the puppet series Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons.

Faces in the crowd, Royal Court: Theatre Upstairs, London
Of all the new plays that have opened since the financial turmoil began, Leo Butler's Faces in the Crowd is the closest to a true credit-crunch drama, a bare-knuckle marital slugfest that's a Strindberg or an Albee for the credit-crunch generation. When the row is at its height, there are bitter recriminations about buying with plastic and falling for the have-it-now-pay-later ethos. But, of course, the play deals with the kind of emotional debts that are harder to cope with.

Batsheva Dance Company, Sadler's Wells/Riverside Studios, London
On Tuesday night at Sadler's Wells, secret service officers were seen checking under the seats. The next night outside Riverside Studios, protesters tried to persuade punters to boycott the show. What contemporary dance company could possibly merit such attention? An Israeli one, apparently. Batsheva is hardly a political entity, but it's funded by Israel's government, its performers include none of Arab extraction, and it is "proud to be considered Israel's leading ambassador".

Faces in the Crowd, Royal Court Upstairs, London La Clique, Hippodrome, London
Con O'Neill's Dave is scrambling out of bed. Has his humiliating attempt at sexual congress with Amanda Drew been filmed, by accident, on his webcam? It looks that way for a moment in Leo Butler's new payback drama, Faces in the Crowd, as O'Neill rushes over to his computer exclaiming that no one has switched off the wireless connection. Heaven knows what he'd say if he glanced upwards. The audience in the Royal Court's attic theatre are all peering down from where his cornice should be, like dozens of flies on the wall.

Bloodbath on Broadway: The credit crunch hits
They don't usually stop smiling in Spring Awakening, a relentlessly cheerful Broadway musical that won eight gongs at 2007's Tony Awards. But there were frowns aplenty backstage last week, when the cast were suddenly informed that they will all very soon be out of a job.

Observations: Gergiev's not so merry dance
Some conductors are more Maestro than others. At a curtain call for the Mariinsky Ballet at Sadler's Wells last week, dancer Ekaterina Kondaurova ran to the wings to bring on star conductor and artistic director Valery Gergiev. So far, so normal – but then there was a long pause. Her colleagues, embarrassed, went on taking their bows. At last Kondaurova came back, alone. After a few more calls, she tried the wings again: this time, she got him.

Overspill, Soho Theatre, London
 Baron, Finch and Potts – mates since they were tiny – are 20-year-old Bromley lads who are looking forward to larging it in the town centre on a Friday night.

What's the fuss about Pinter?