Ian McKellen reigns supreme in Robert Icke’s Henry IV mashup; Tyrell Williams’s coming-of-age football drama is bang on target; and the Brontë sisters are let loose – up to a point – at the National

Ian McKellen follows in the footsteps of David Warner and Antony Sher as he takes on a character who has been played as wittily jovial and cruelly cunning

In a superb year for the stage, our chief critic gives 10 shows an extra round of applause. Plus, Guardian theatre reviewers each pick their 2022 standout

Robert Icke’s combative 2019 play about medical ethics, identity politics and antisemitism returns to the West End to divide and challenge audiences

They’ve supercharged Shakespeare, staged impossible novels and stunned with scandalous cinema adaptations. Internationaal Theater Amsterdam reveal their radical secrets

Katori Hall gave us a miracle, Caryl Churchill delivered a dark quartet and Tom Hiddleston astounded in Betrayal. But the year’s highlight was a breathtaking Ibsen with Hayley Atwell

The theatre designer on creating a family dinner at Agamemnon’s, an election night Oedipus and the night Fiona Shaw got stuck

She has turned The Simpsons into a post-apocalyptic opera, invented her own language and put on a communist Dracula pageant. Now, the US playwright is staging the creepy, late-night TV classic that scarred her as a child

From mapping the journey of The Curious Incident’s teen hero to putting Shakespeare in prison and erecting a towering newsroom for Ink, Bunny Christie talks through five of her creations

Andrew Scott’s prince proves a brilliant communicator as Robert Icke’s acclaimed Almeida production transfers to the West End