Backbeat, about the Beatles in early 1960s Hamburg, is no mere jukebox musical, and all the better for it

Richard II, The Tempest and Hamlet fill the Shakespeare quota and Sweeney Todd is the musical of the season

Since War Horse became a hit, the South African Handspring Puppet Company have become celebrated for their combination of manipulation and acting with animal and human puppets. This is one they made earlier, in 1992

The Deep Blue Sea at the Festival Theatre is all mothballs and starch, with Rattigan’s Nijinsky a merrier dance

Chichester and Terence Rattigan seem a perfect match, and for the centenary of the playwright’s birth the Festival Theatre has revived one of his best,