Groundbreaking linguistic analysis indicates Christopher Marlowe co-wrote section of play

Chris Bush’s female Faustus is original, ambitious and fantastically revisionist – but this bare-boned production fails to save its soul

Playwright Chris Bush has turned Faust into a young woman in a new version of the story. She is still vainglorious, headstrong and power hungry, but the inversion brings fascinating new insights

Nick Bagnall’s production ably draws out the parallels with Shakespeare’s Richard II and the cast speak the verse beautifully

Jocelyn Jee Esien and Pauline McLynn are on glorious form and bring out the glee in Marlowe’s macabre classic

Marlowe’s bloody tyrant and Shakespeare’s banished prince both get a rare chance to strut in two very effective productions

A dazzling Jude Owusu is haunted by the dead as the RSC revives Marlowe’s story of violence, vengeance and vanity

This well-matched pair of tragedies in the RSC’s Rome season give us strong images, unforgettable lines, probing psychology – and a lot of blood

The US show imagines the life of the playwright as an upstart in Elizabethan London, but its Luhrmann-esque histrionics feel out of place and out of touch

From Dan Brown to Graham Greene, the papacy has long proved fascinating to writers. Mark Lawson examines the mysteries around this powerful figure and the church he leads

When he played Bolingbroke to Ian McKellen’s Richard in a 1960s Prospect production, West discovered a play divided between his character and the king – and learned that McKellen is a white-wine actor while he’s definitely red

Kit Harington gets his kit off and Jenna Russell sings Bat out of Hell… but no one profits from this deal with the devil

The Game of Thrones actor gives us a sense of the scholar’s flailing despair but Jamie Lloyd’s excessive version of the tragedy comes with a trite message

The Game of Thrones star on his return to the stage and his aversion to the ‘posh actor’ tag