The Latest Breaking News from Bertolt Brecht

Anthony Lau brings rich cultural authenticity to the stinging China-set capitalist critique – as well as slides and giant frogs

Birmingham Opera Company regroup, and the CBSO triumph in Elgar’s great oratorio as the city’s rich musical life thrives. And shock and anger as the BBC Singers are axed

Bertolt Brecht’s tale of four agitators dispatched from Soviet Russia to foment revolution in pre-communist China is almost a parody of previous Birmingham Opera Company productions

French film-maker who challenged the primacy of narration and orthodox notions of realism

National and Cast theatres assemble diverse Doncastrians who just ‘would not have met any other way’

I've been fortunate to have met a number of geniuses in my years as a theater critic but only one who was a true sage.

I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.

In 1953, the Communist East German regime quashed a widespread uprising and afterwards admonished the protesters, saying the government had lost confidence in the people. In a famous satirical poem, left-wing author Bertolt Brecht said that, if so, perhaps the government could dissolve the people and elect a new lot.