At the world’s biggest barrel of laughs, Hannah Gadsby, John Kearns and Rose Matafeo rub shoulders with homegrown stars-in-the-making. Our writer has the time of his life

What’s the biggest comedy festival in the world? Parochial Britons would say Edinburgh . Internationalists may consider Montreal’s Just for Laughs . They would all be wrong. Just for Laughs is out of the running: it filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year, its future in doubt. And the Edinburgh fringe is a performing arts festival not just comedy. So for now, if only on that technicality, Melbourne has the biggest comedy festival in the world: a three-week carnival of standup, sketch and beyond, dedicated to nothing but the art of making people laugh.

In 20-plus years writing about comedy, I had never been – until now. But I have felt its influence. Twice recently, the winner of its most outstanding show award went on to win the Edinburgh equivalent. One was Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette , arguably the most significant standup set of the last decade, which launched in Melbourne before conquering the world. And as recently as 2022, a former Melbourne champ – recent Taskmaster star Sam Campbell – won Edinburgh’s top prize, of which Australia has now provided more winners than any other non-UK country. The festival also played a weathervane role in the “trans debate”, when its main award – for years known as the Barry, after Barry Humphries – was re-named after the Dame Edna star’s divisive comments about transgender people .

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As his coming-of-age rollercoaster hits the stage, the novelist talks about the boredom of hospitals, how Britain has changed since Buddha – and why shouting at his kids is a great way to write blogs

It’s been an unfathomably difficult 18 months for Hanif Kureishi. In 2022, the esteemed British writer went to Rome with his wife for Christmas, where he fainted and fell. When he woke up in a pool of blood he had lost the use of his hands, arms and legs. For more than a year, he was confined to hospital beds, questioned and prodded by doctors and nurses. He couldn’t sit, he couldn’t walk, and he couldn’t pick up a pen to write.

So I’m struck by the optimism and humour of the man speaking to me over Zoom this morning. When I join the call, Kureishi is sitting erectly in his kitchen and joking with theatre director Emma Rice about their new stage adaptation of his novel The Buddha of Suburbia, which opens at the RSC’s Swan theatre this week. It turns out the long months of convalescence – Kureishi has spent time in five hospitals, undergone spinal surgery, and only returned to his home last December – haven’t dampened his creative spirit.

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Footage shows Olivier awards host saying on red carpet: ‘Oh my God, you’d never say that to a man’

The actor Hannah Waddingham was cheered by onlookers after she reprimanded a photographer who appeared to ask her to “show leg” on the Olivier awards red carpet.

In a video posted on X, the photographer’s comments are inaudible but Waddingham responds: “Oh my God, you’d never say that to a man, my friend.”

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Guardian photographer Christian Sinibaldi attended the annual theatre bash to catch Nicole Scherzinger, Sarah Snook and Cara Delevingne roaming around backstage at the Royal Albert Hall

• News: Sunset Boulevard wins big at Oliviers

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West End actors awarded in ceremony at Royal Albert Hall in London

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Jamie Lloyd’s revival takes home seven awards including for Nicole Scherzinger but film and TV stars in other productions miss out

Jamie Lloyd’s bombastic reimagining of Sunset Boulevard starring Nicole Scherzinger was the standout show at this year’s Olivier awards, with seven wins on an evening when productions with celebrity talent were often overlooked.

The Savoy theatre adaptation of Billy Wilder’s classic 1950 film about the dark side of the Hollywood dream took home best actor in a musical for Tom Francis and best actress in a musical for Scherzinger. Lloyd – described as creating “ a stupendous sense of reinvention ” by the Guardian – won best director.

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Almeida, London
Five American friends gather to catch up in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ new play. It’s a portrait of midlife malaise, but also a subtle meditation on post-Covid life

A group of former high-schoolers meet, 20 years on, to reminisce and reconnect – or that’s the idea, anyway. Instead they end up drinking, fighting and ruing the disappointments of their middle-aged lives. What looks like a typical American reunion drama is – finally! – a thoughtful post-pandemic play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.

Big politics beyond the losses of Covid – America’s part in recent wars, 9/11, the storming of the Capitol, gun crime – are embroidered into the personality contests and back-stories to explore memory, millennial malaise and modern American history under the shadow of death. A US flag hangs on one side of the porch on which this pre-reunion (before the bigger party) takes place and it looks like a subtle accusation of unquestioned nationalism rather than an endorsement.

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The Studio, Edinburgh, and touring
The fifth of Rona Munro’s James plays fails to develop an interesting premise about a hidden romance

A dark stage is lapped by flickering candles. Here, four actors present six characters and, briefly, a chorus that introduces the action: the date is 1528; Scotland is a country with “One god, one church, one pope… Until, one day, it isn’t.”

James V: Katherine is the fifth of Rona Munro’s sequence of “ James plays ” set during the reigns of kings of Scotland. Her ambition is, the playwright says in a programme note, “to make invisible Scottish history visible”. In this instance, by placing a fictional queer love story centre stage and showing how religious puritanism “might have affected women and closed the door on any possibility of queer tolerance”. In a play that feels more like a work in progress than a finished drama, these issues are touched on but do not pulse the heart of the action.

James V: Katherine is at the Studio, Edinburgh, until 20 April, then tours Scotland until 1 June

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The austerity-hit council's decision to stop funding the arts is a calamity for a city whose rich contribution to the UK – from the Rep, the Royal Ballet and Tolkien to heavy metal and the Streets – is such a vital source of civic pride

The Birmingham Rep altered the course of Britain’s cultural history. Opened in 1913 by the dramatist Billie Lester, the company’s ambition to champion formally innovative work and new writing attracted the likes of Laurence Olivier, who joined in 1926. The Rep hosted British premieres of works by Anton Chekhov and Leo Tolstoy. The current theatre building is one of Birmingham’s finest examples of mid-century architecture – designed and built in 1971 by Graham Winteringham, its glossy, futuristic front conceals an interior that still carries the excitement of an airport departure lounge in the early days of flight. But today, the fate of the building and its activity hangs in the balance. Closure is possible, with funding from local government to be withdrawn completely by 2025. The theatre’s artistic director, Rachael Thomas, tells me that the situation is dire, “a microcosm for the hollowing out of civic life that is taking place across the city”.

Birmingham city council declared itself in effect bankrupt in 2023. Austerity measures imposed by the Conservative government had finally created an intolerable climate for one of the largest local authorities in Europe. Due to an enormous funding deficit, cuts of £300m are planned to take place over the next two years, including reduced waste collections and dimmed street lighting. All funding to local arts organisations, including the Rep, Ikon Gallery and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, will be scrapped by 2025, with a 50% reduction already imposed this year. The decision has been condemned by figures such as Birmingham Royal Ballet’s director, Carlos Acosta, the musician Actress, members of Duran Duran and Napalm Death, and Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, among many others.

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