Theatre review: Rock'n'Roll

Tom Stoppard time, so lots of people overheard in the interval carefully avoiding giving an opinion in case they're exposed as not understanding it. Rock'n'Roll pits Communist idealism against Cold War reality via two Cambridge academics, whose lives it follows from 1968 to 1989. Max (Nathaniel Parker) is a lecturer and vocal Communist who thinks he's found an enthusiastic protégé in Czech graduate student Jan (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd.) When Russia invades Czechoslovakia to curb its apparent intentions for reform, Jan returns to Prague in the vague impression that he can do something to help, but the authorities - who sent him to England to spy on Max in the first place, and see if he can be turned to an asset - are unimpressed. But Czechoslovakia is still seen as a comparatively open, accessible part of the Eastern Bloc, and the fact that it allows foreign bands to play is a plus to the music-obsessed Jan.

Theatre review: Much Ado About Nothing(National Theatre)

The year's third major Much Ado About Nothing is the starriest, courtesy of John Heffernan and Future Dame Katherine Parkinson as Benedick and Beatrice at the Lyttelton. The National's go-to Shakespeare director Simon Godwin was best-known for directing new work when the RSC hired him to give a fresh eye to The Two Gentlemen of Verona nearly a decade ago, and while that was the start of a major change of direction for his career, he's still bringing that outsider's attitude to one of the most beloved comedies of all. Dialogue has been cut, moved, assigned to different characters, and while it's all Shakespeare's work it doesn't all necessarily originate in this play (there's even the best part of a sonnet bulking up Hero's role.) At heart the play - and its most famous couple - remain the same, but the irreverent treatment of the text yields results in making many of the plotlines and characters less problematic.