He doesn’t want to be here. He wants to be at home, away from potential viruses.

But that doesn’t stop him being witty and charming. Both shows are fun and vibrant, with a joke a minute, each one being quickly set up and smashed down.

There’s a few things that always happen in a Stewart Lee gig. He always slurs other comedians – this time it’s Ricky Gervais, Jimmy Carr and Pheobe Waller-Bridge – apparently Fleabag isn’t the first time ever that the fourth wall has been broken, who knew. There’s a lengthy bit about Alan Bennett, and Dave Chapelle doesn’t fair too well.

As a self professed fat, balding, deaf, man in his fifties with poor eyesight and diabetes, he doesn’t look like your typical snowflake. And he’s not. He’s just very culturally and socially aware, and believes strongly in political correctness. He has centre left politics, and isn’t afraid to share them.

It’s not intellectual comedy, but it is cerebral. It’s not deadpan, but it is laidback. He takes you on a journey, but there’s no conclusion. You don’t need those things with Lee. You feel comfortable, even as he challenges you, and the crowd are roaring with laughter throughout.

Is he the world’s greatest living stand-up? I’ve not seen enough to answer that. But as a man to spend my last day of freedom with, he’ll do pretty well.

What has influenced your thinking around the production?

I think a big thing which has influenced my thinking on the production has been about what a forest is and what it represents. I did a lot of reading into the way forests function and the societal behaviour of trees. I was quite determined not to have any trees on stage, mainly because everybody kept asking me how are you going to do the trees?!

But actually, when you look into trees and their behaviour, they’re extraordinary. There’s a network of roots in a forest, so all the trees are connected to each other. If one tree is struggling then other trees who have enough, will send nutrients to try and save that other tree through the root system, regardless of species.  They believe – it sounds ridiculous(!) – the success of the forest depends on the success of every single tree within that forest.  I took that as a metaphor for society, and what Shakespeare is asking us to think about as audience members watching this play, especially right now in a time of increased borders and a rise of – you could say – nationalism, and concern with ourselves.

In the play there’s a marked difference between the restrictive world of the court and the forest.  In our version of the play the audience will represent the trees. When the play reaches the forest scenes, the actors will be able to see the audience, whereas they didn’t have access to them during the court scenes.  The forest world is a world where we can interact and communicate with each other.

You have said this production was all about putting the ‘you’ in As You Like It – can you tell us a bit about what you mean by that and how will this be reflected in the staging?

I think putting the ‘You’ in As You Like It is something that Shakespeare has done with this play – he’s constantly playing with the relationship between the actors and the audience, and lots of the characters in the play go between being characters, being spectators, being actors – he’s referring to the act of theatre constantly (“All the world’s a stage”). And so I think Shakespeare is asking us as theatre-makers to reconsider our relationship to the audience, making the audience feel that their presence in the theatre matters, that it changes what we’re doing. And they can be directly involved with what’s happening on the stage – so we’re really embracing that with the production.

I think it’s also reflected in the actors that are part of this show, and the other two plays that are part of the same season.  We want the acting company to reflect the nation in all its diversity.  This play was written at a time when society was becoming more diverse, and the play itself is about celebrating and embracing difference.

What are your current thoughts on the style of the production? Can you give us any early insights into the process?

I’m not setting the play in a particular time or place.  It doesn’t feel like a play which needs a certain period setting. And I’m very aware as a director of not choosing a setting which restricts the play, and that only tells one aspect of the play so I always look for the approach and the framework that allows all of the play to live.

In many ways the play is a massive exploration of theatre itself.  So there will be elements of panto, live music, stand-up comedy on stage.  And there will be audience interaction, political debate and improvisation.

Although everyone will look and feel very modern, we’ll be using a real mingle-mangle of costumes from different productions, and will be playing with different genres, different times, different periods.  It’s going to be a real mish-mash that celebrates the art of theatre making.

Would you say As You Like It is as much about ‘finding yourself’ as ‘getting lost’?

I think sometimes you have to lose yourself to find yourself. But Shakespeare isn’t asking us to get lost in order to just get lost – that would be pointless. He’s asking us to break down some of our barriers and to think outside of the boxes that we’ve put ourselves in, or that society has put us in.  And he puts the responsibility on the human being to do that for one’s self. I think the play is about the potential for change in humanity, and for us to be able to change the world we must first change ourselves and embrace other sides of ourselves.

We understand that this production features one of the most ambitious props and set elements ever created by the RSC’s production teams. Can you explain a little bit about where the idea for ‘Hymen’ came about?

Hymen is the god of marriage, which will be represented by a very large prop/puppet We have to believe in this God and yet, God is not a tangible thing. God is a leap of imagination, so how do we get 1000 audience members to take that leap in their imaginations and believe in this God? All of the actors will be involved in the scene in which Hymen appears – it will be a communal act, to give the sense of coming together and believing in a God or in something bigger than ourselves.

The role of Rosalind has been described as ‘the female Hamlet’ and is credited with more lines than any other female Shakespearean character. Was this something that attracted you to the play?

Yes absolutely!  I was attracted to a woman who is working out who she is as the play unfolds. I think sometimes with Shakespeare’s women, it feels like they already know who they are. Or that their internal life isn’t really the thing that Shakespeare is exploring in the play. With Rosalind it’s completely different. She changes her mind all the time, and she changes her mind with us, with the audience.

She talks about this magician, this uncle magician, who she’s conversed with since the age of 3, and Lucy Phelps, who is playing the role, and I have talked a lot about who on earth this magician is. We feel that this magician is inside of all of us, representing the potential for change and to be different people.  The play is really all about Rosalind having a conversation with herself to find a way to contentment, and that’s not easy.  Sometimes you have to crawl through the dirt to get to the diamond. 

Many well known actors have played Rosalind for the RSC, including Peggy Aschroft, Vanessa Redgrave, Eileen Atkins, Juliet Stevenson, and more recently, Katy Stephens and Pippa Nixon. What do you think Lucy Phelps will bring to the role?

Ah, Lucy Phelps! I think Lucy is relentlessly intelligent and rigorous in what she as an actress and as a woman wants from the world, and she does all of that with generosity and with the most infectious spirit.  I think you have to have both of those things to play Rosalind. And that’s something that she has very, very naturally.

Lucy’s never satisfied as an artist.  She’s always digging, she’s always chipping away.  But if you chip, chip, chip away in rehearsal, and then walk on stage and you’ve stopped chipping because you’ve decided what it is, then you’ve lost Rosalind – whereas Lucy has the bravery as an actress, to keep discovering… to keep searching…  

What do you hope audiences will take away from this production? 

I would like for the audience to take away a new relationship with their own ‘magician’.  To feel able to explore the possibility and potential of change, especially right now, with all of the uncertainty in this country and Europe and the rest of the world.  To feel that change is possible, and that change can come from working together, learning from each other and from being more honest.  Being brave enough to jump off the cliff into the unknown.

If you were given the chance to escape to the forest, what three things would you take with you?

My dog, Plato.

My husband.

And a really good walking stick!

That’s what great theatre should do. Take you outside of yourself. Provide you meaning. Make your reconsider things. As excellent as the National Theatre’s new adaptation of the seminal drama is, no doubt its an impact that was felt far more keenly back in the 1950s and 1960s. After all, A Taste of Honey features a single mother, an unwed pregnant girl, a gay best friend, and a black sailor. Racy stuff indeed.

Bijan Sheibani’s production for the National Theatre was first produced at the Lyttelton Theatre in 2014 and is designed by Hildegard Bechtler with sound design from Ian Dickinson, composition from Benjamin Kwasi Burrell, lighting design by Paul Anderson and movement from Aline David. It’s currently on tour around the UK – and stopped off at Canterbury’s The Marlowe Theatre.

Jazz oozes out of the stage, smokily set. Helen (played by Jodie Prenger) enjoys her alcohol that ‘consoles from life’ as she tries to muddle through a life that hasn’t been fair to her and her daughter Jo (Gemma Dobson). She has ‘wear and tear on her soul’ and finds solace in the bottle and with men, and warns Jo that it’s ‘work or want in your future.’ She might seem to throw herself at any man who comes to the door, seeking marriage, but that’s all that was out there for women of her generation. Jo’s pregnancy puts her in a difficult situation as an unmarried woman, but the baby makes her feel important.

The prose is sparky and witty, and there are some great one liners. We’re invited into the moody living room of the women, although the large stage doesn’t convey the claustrophobia of the living situation . The songs from a three piece jazz band are well placed, and add to the rhythm of the play, punctuating it perfectly.

It might have been the eve of the time when everything changed alongside Larkin, Lady Chatterley, and The Beatles, but this was no liberal society. Yet Delaney aimed to make socially inclusive theatre that challenged boundaries.

Perhaps the reason that this show, as good as it was, didn’t hit home very hard is because we are far more liberal than back in the 1950s – even in today’s shadow of intolerances. The punchy impact that would have been seen on that stage at The Theatre Royal, Stratford, in 1958, just can’t resonate in the same way in 2019.

That’s not to take away from what Delaney did. She created a powerful piece of theatre at a time when the boys’ club still ruled, working class women didn’t have a voice, and gritty life in Salford didn’t belong on the stage. A Taste of Honey changed the theatre landscape. And for that reason it deserves to be seen, decades later.

Delaney wrote it in just ten days after seeing Terence Rattigan’s Variation of a Theme at the Opera House in Manchester and believing she could do better. Covering relationships, female strength, families and more, it’s a bold and vibrant play that still remains relevant today. Despite being sixty years old, it’s a seminal piece of work with many themes and aspects that still ring true.

The National Theatre production sees Bijan Sheibani (Barber Shop Chronicles), directing Jodie Prenger (Oliver!, One Man, Two Guvnors, Abigail’s Party UK tour) as Helen in this new production.

That’s certainly what Handlebards do. The company cycling actors who carry all the set, props and costume needed to perform extremely energetic, charmingly chaotic and environmentally sustainable Shakespeare plays.

What’s not to love?

Especially when they are hosted by The Marlowe Theatre and performing on a sunny evening at Greyfriars Gardens, just down from The Marlowe’s new space, The Kit. Picnic and drinks at the ready, it was an ideal place to soak up some culture – and raise a few smiles.

In Much Ado About Nothing we see each one of the four male actors take on multiple parts, clearly differentiated by cycling bibs and handlebars. Audience participation was ramped up, and we had two very open and enthusiastic participants take on parts when it was called for. Slapstick came to the fore – as it would have done for the groundlings in Shakespeare’s day – and they played with language and lyricism to make the plot skip along without losing any of the quick wit that the play relies on. Cross dressing, a bit of drunkenness, and a lot of laughs all come to the fore, and make the two hours skip along merrily for all involved. Plotting, frivolity and capers ensue, and the audience is kept captivated and excited as the troupe bounce of each other and the audience.

It’s all enormously good fun. Which is sometimes just how Shakespeare should be.

Kate Wasserberg and Out of Joint Theatre have now revived Dunbar’s play for the #MeToo era, and it seems highly relevant. Grooming, discrimination, money, relationships, power – it’s all there.

So whilst Rita, Sue and Bob Too is informed by Dunbar’s own experiences, it’s not an autobiographical play. It was also never intended to be a piece of social comment. But what she has done very well is observe some of the nuances of living life on an estate and brought them to life.

As well as questions of consent and sex, the play raises important issues around class. These young girls are so vulnerable because they live in a society that tells them they have no future, bar finding a boyfriend. They can be groomed because they have nothing else to be.

That’s what makes the classic textbook grooming of Bob (James Atherton) so apparently simple. A married man, he is pretending to drive Rita (Taj Atwal) and Sue (Gemma Dobson) home, and starts a fling with both of them. They feel in control and flattered, but really are being used. Atwal and Dobson are bold and believable as 15 year old girls, perfectly encapsulating that desperate need to be seen as an adult whilst being innocent. What we ask of our teenagers is complex and demanding – they’re still children, yet in cases like this, we demand agency. With an unpromising future ahead of them though, what do we expect.

The writing is tough and spirited. In fact, despite dealing with complex issues, it’s really funny. The wickedly acute observation delivers startling insight and raises many questions. A fantastic production.

The play is currently on tour, including a visit to The Marlowe, Canterbury.

This version of the Richard Gere and Debra Winger movie in which trainee US Navy pilot Zack falls in love with factory worker Paula against a background of tough training and military life at the US Naval Aviation training facility in Florida is the fairytale we expect of musicals, although not necessarily modern life. The gender bias in the story can make the modern audience uncomfortable, as do homophobic slurs, which could have easily been cut from the script. But these are gripes with the era and the original script, rather than this buoyant rendition which delights the audience at Canterbury’s Marlowe Theatre.

Keisha Atwell plays Casey Segar, the first woman in history to be accepted to fly a jet, and her dance performance is no less impressive, as she switches from move to move with as much crispness as an origami shape.

Set to a soundtrack of eighties hits, the cast blast through Bon Jovi’s  Livin’ On A Prayer, Madonna’s Material Girl, Blondie’s Heart of Glass and of course the epic Up Where We Belong, Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes’ tune that shot to fame on the back of the 1982 film. The singing is excellent, with Emma Williams as Paula and Jessica Dailey as Lynette having particularly potent vocals.

Despite potential misgivings, which say more about the eighties than they do of this representation, the Marlowe audience seems to be in raptures, giving the cast a standing ovation as the final song renditions belt out.

It was in 1890, whilst testing the viability of a tunnel under the Channel, that diggers at Shakespeare Cliffs near Dover, struck coal. Looking at maps, this made sense. If you were to draw a line between the coalfields of North Wales, Lancashire, the Black Country and mines in the north of France, Kent was right in line. It was estimated that here, in a corner in the south east of England, was ten billion tons of workable coal. Under the Chamberlain government, 18 pits were dug in the area, with it being announced in 1926 that Kent could be a new industrial black country, and one that was close to London, cutting the costs of fueling the capital.

But Kent had no history of mining, and so workers were recruited from Scotland, Nottingham, Lancashire, Wales, and other areas with a mining history. It’s these families that the film focuses on. The families of Aylesham, Betteshanger and Snowdown, villages that mining was at the centre of.

Mining always seems to have brought with it tensions and tussles. Earning more than the agricultural workers, a divide was created by the newcomers and locals right from the start. Those used to seeing green fields were worried that dirt and spoil heaps would tarnish the land. Of course, there are the strikes in the eighties, when coal towns became dark and desolate places to be, surviving only through the warmth and community that this film so brilliantly conveys existed. And the debate between the Betteshanger Pie and Snowdown Pasty, one of the biggest rivalries of all.

The film seamlessly links the history and heritage of the Kent mining towns with the development and regeneration in the county today. Villages that were almost wiped out when the collieries closed are being given funding and attention to help rebuild their communities. A Century of Coal aims to support that through raising money for the building of a mining museum, green hub and leisure space at the site of the old Betteshanger colliery. It’s not just a story about yesterday, but one that has relevance to today.

There was a certain demographic in the Marlowe Studio for The Century of Coal. Most of the audience were older and wiser than me, and as the post-screening questions revealed, had mining in their history and in their blood. I enjoyed learning more about a story I’m unfamiliar with, despite it taking place so close to home. It’s a part of history that I knew nothing of, and now feels relevant. The way of life might be gone, but the story lives on.