The Curious Case of Benjamin Button review – warm and winsome musical tugs at the heartstrings

Relocating the F Scott Fitzgerald story to a Cornish fishing village, this is a vivacious yet touching show

Alan Bennett at 90: ‘What will people think? I don’t care any more’

In his 10th decade The History Boys writer is as prolific as ever with a war film in the works and a new sex-fuelled novella set in a home for the elderly. He talks about mourning Maggie Smith, turning down a knighthood and what he makes of Donald Trump

‘You get more confident as the parts run out’: Harriet Walter on her stage career, Succession and Shakespeare’s women

In her new book the acclaimed actor imagines what the Bard’s female characters might have said if they had had the chance

The Crime Is Mine review – François Ozon’s 1930s crime comedy is a moreish crowdpleaser

Ozon and a stellar cast serve up an entertaining, if shallow caper that shades a little too close to #MeToo

Boy whose Mousetrap show at school led to legal threat joins West End cast

Alasdair Buchan, who directed his version aged 11 in 1997, will play mysterious stranger in long-running whodunnit

The Little Prince review – twinkling spin on Saint-Exupéry’s flight of fantasy

Performance poet Toby Thompson has a breezy rapport with the young audience as he retells the bittersweet novella with modern trimmings

The Mystery of Little Angel Theatre review – Robin Stevens brings juicy intrigue in dynamic whodunnit

As you would expect from the queen of kids’ crime fiction, there’s a grisly murder to solve and a lineup of dubious suspects that leaves the audience abuzz with theories

Never Let Me Go review – fresh life found in Kazuo Ishiguro’s school dystopia

Nell Barlow is heartbreaking as the doomed heroine of the alt-reality boarding-school tale, expertly adapted by Suzanne Heathcote

Maggie Smith, Oscar-winning star of stage and screen, dies aged 89

In a career that began in the 1950s, her roles ranged from Desdemona to Miss Jean Brodie, Virginia Woolf and Minerva McGonagall

Giant – exploration of Roald Dahl and antisemitism that speaks to our times

Sophisticated play melds fact with fiction in its dramatisation of a scandalous moment in the author’s life

1984 review – Keith Allen’s sadistic superior emanates controlled rage

Allen gives a capable performance in an arresting production that gives a chilling sense of state control – but the central romance fails to fizz

Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus may have been co-written by forgotten dramatist

Exclusive: Scholar names Henry Porter as likely co-author of 1604 play after linguistic clues in his surviving work

Daniel Foxx: ‘Every comedian has a notes app with joke ideas – if mine got wiped, my career would be over’

The standup on his new book about stuck-up children, earnest hecklers and why he gets annoyed about being called a ‘TikTok comedian’

‘I’m an ordinary man who plays crazy parts’: John Lithgow on tackling Roald Dahl

When John Lithgow got the role of author and antisemite Roald Dahl, friends feared for his safety. He reveals why he’s never been one to shy from a challenge

On my radar: Yotam Ottolenghi’s cultural highlights

The chef on a novel that triumphantly captures messy London life, a Turkish Netflix drama that shows Istanbul’s split worlds and the app that gets him going in the morning