A Heart That Works by Rob Delaney audiobook review – a tender memoir about the death of a child

The comedian narrates his book about the gruelling treatment of his young son and the love and grief that enveloped his family

Hamnet review – slick adaptation captures Shakespeare’s horrified unravelling

Lolita Chakrabarti’s staging of Maggie O’Farrell’s moving novel about the death of the playwright’s son – and his resurrection in Hamlet – is powerfully played, with the occasional cheesy line

‘They are the crucial buyers’: theatres tap into the power of female readers

The Time Traveler’s Wife and Hamnet are among novels written, and largely read, by women coming to the British stage

Booker shortlistee and UK playwright among winners of Windham-Campbell prizes

Recognising work in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama, the $175,000 awards aim to free writers to work without financial pressures

Hamnet on stage: Maggie O’Farrell and Lolita Chakrabarti on adapting the hit novel for the RSC

O’Farrell’s novel about Shakespeare losing his young son to the plague struck a powerful chord in lockdown. She and Chakrabarti discuss class, place and loss in their theatre adaptation

The Lost Spells review – enchanting musical has an abundance of magic

A cockney fox and a preening jackdaw open our eyes to the wonders of nature in this charming show based on Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris’s book

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead review – a magnificent Complicité creation

Simon McBurney directs a toweringly innovative adaptation of the eco-thriller by Nobel-winner Olga Tokarczuk

London’s County Hall to host immersive Paddington Bear theatre show

The Paddington Bear Experience, a family-friendly show based on Michael Bond’s character, will be at the ex-GLC building on the South Bank

Rare copy of Othello shows a cast list involved in real-life murder drama

A 1655 edition of Shakespeare’s tragedy names members of an acting troupe, one of whom was slain in an eerie echo of the play

The Guardian view on literary adaptations: an old wheeze that works

Editorial: Eyes might roll at yet another Dickens miniseries, but plays based on two more recent novels, Hamnet and A Little Life, have hit the jackpot

Rachel Parris: ‘Standup would have terrified me – the piano was a good comfort blanket’

The comic on hecklers, pre-show rituals, Jane Austen puns and her childhood heroes

‘A truly special spot’: arts insiders’ top tips for free cultural places in Britain

From Russell Tovey to Gemma Cairney, cultural figures pick their favourite hangouts – from Edinburgh to Aberystwyth – with no entry charge

Baldwin v Buckley: how the ‘debate play’ made a riveting resurgence

Verbal clashes from history are being thrillingly restaged for modern audiences. Do these grand battles prove we’ve lost the art of disagreement? And could watching them anew change the politics of tomorrow?

The Age of Innocence review – Scorsese’s brilliant tragedy of New York society manners

Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer are powerfully matched as guilty lovers in an Edith Wharton adaptation that bears comparison with Hollywood’s golden age classics

Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward by Oliver Soden review – the man in the ironic mask

A lively, affectionate but far from adulatory new biography of the playwright marks the 50th anniversary of his death and draws on unpublished letters and diaries to expose a painful private life obscured by success