★★★★☆ Throughout the current crisis, the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School has demonstrated an admirable determination to fulfil the old dictum that the show must go on. Their latest brave riposte to the closure of theatres is this production of Lucy Kirkwood’s Hedda, her updated version of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, streamed live from the Bristol Old Vic.

In this, my first experience of live theatre since March I could not help thinking of the film Back to the Future.  Is this really the way that theatre is going to be staged in the future? Will we be forever either looking longingly over our shoulder at the way things used to be . . .

TO PROVIDE ALL PEOPLE. 25th June

★★★★☆ Owen Sheers’ poem-play To Provide All People was originally written in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the NHS. It was premiered in 2018 in a star-studded BBC film, directed by Pip Broughton.  Back then it had important things to say about our much-cherished, much-abused health service, but the Covid-19 crisis has surely intensified its relevance.

62 SPERM WHALES

★★★★☆ Seven actors in seven different locations scattered across the country, perform a play that places all seven characters on the same beach of a small coastal town at the same time.  It shouldn’t work, but thanks to the technical skills of what in normal circumstances would be called the backstage team, somehow it all comes together.