Hill’s portrayal of Yosser Hughes in the 1982 BBC series launched a career that included role in Titanic and Lord of the Rings

Bernard Hill, the stage, television and film actor who first became famous for his unforgettable portrayal of Yosser “gizza job” Hughes, has died at the age of 79.

Hill played the character in Alan Bleasdale’s 1982 BBC series Boys from the Blackstuff.

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Royal Court, London
Four south London girls tell stories during detention at a mosque in Sabrina Ali’s play, which ends before we know much about them

Four British Somali girls are thrown together in detention at a south London mosque, having erred in “dugsi” (Islamic school). Sabrina Ali’s play is inspired by the high-schoolers in John Hughes’s The Breakfast Club. Like them, these girls, all chalk and cheese, have no choice but to engage with each other, especially when their teacher goes Awol.

Ali also plays Munira, a mischief maker, while Yasmin (Faduma Issa) wears a hot-pink jacket and talks about a friend’s bridal shower, and Salma (Susu Ahmed), a teachers’ pet, won’t reveal why she has been sent to detention with them. The mysterious Hani (Hadsan Mohamud) sits slightly apart, giving the other girls the side-eye, her reason for being there unexplained.

Dugsi Dayz runs at the Royal Court, London, until 18 May.

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Globe theatre, London
There’s no whiff of stuffiness in a Sean Holmes’ production characterised by warm summer euphoria, Elizabethan-era magic and entrancing music

The Globe so often comes under fire for tampering with tradition but here is Shakespeare’s play on love, deception, male singledom and female purity that should please the purists. Its comedy is delivered straight, as it were, complete with Elizabethan-era costumes that contain the production’s greatest wow factor.

The masked ball, in which the disguised Don Pedro (Ryan Donaldson) woos Hero (Lydia Fleming) on behalf of Claudio, is a wonder to behold. There are elaborate and exquisite animal themed beaks, manes and feathers that looks like a ravishingly surreal 16th-century fantasy come to life.

At Shakespeare’s Globe theatre , London, until 24 August

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York St John University, York
Footsbarn Travelling Theatre’s Twelfth Night and a Turkish Macbeth rubbed shoulders with manga, memoir and a Ukrainian scratch show at this boundary-defying festival

Debra Ann Byrd , founder of the Harlem Shakespeare festival, is speaking at an in-conversation event titled My Black Girl’s Journey , companion piece to Becoming Othello , her “living memoir” solo show: “A black friend asked me: ‘Why are you only doing Shakespeare?’” Byrd’s path to the playwright was set after a theatrical agent told her that the colour of her skin would bar her from playing classical roles. Her friend’s question led her to the conclusion: “Shakespeare is my vehicle. He makes a door open in a way not possible unless we have this one thing in common.”

At the sixth York International Shakespeare festival , people from the UK, EU, US, India, Turkey, Japan, Ukraine and beyond share “this one thing in common”. Over 10 days and nights, multinational audiences and artists crisscross barriers, visible and invisible, via performances, exhibitions, concerts, workshops and seminars.

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Swan; Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
A new era at the RSC opens with a potent staging by Emma Rice and Hanif Kureishi of his classic everyman tale and a clever take on Shakespeare’s comedy that cuts through the verbiage – with help from a Bridgerton stalwart

So this is the new RSC. Vibrant. Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey open their first season as joint artistic directors with a bold reimagining of one of the comedies and a carnival adaptation of a glorious 20th-century novel. They have filled the two stages with disguises and ideas about performing: with Shakespearean themes as well as with Shakespeare’s words.

Stratford now has more than one everyman: not only the prince of Denmark but The Buddha of Suburbia , or rather his son. The narrator of Hanif Kureishi’s 1990 novel is an ideal figure through whom to look inwards – at personality – as well as outwards, at an era and a society: vivid and in flux, he might have been created for the stage.

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The actor on catching the theatre bug playing Sally Bowles in Cabaret, being a football fan, and dealing with a fire that destroyed her home in LA

London-born Cara Delevingne, 31, began modelling in her teens and was twice model of the year at the British fashion awards. She started her acting career in Joe Wright’s 2012 film adaptation of Anna Karenina . Subsequent big screen roles include Paper Towns , Suicide Squad , Tulip Fever and London Fields . On TV, she has starred in Carnival Row , Only Murders in the Building and American Horror Story . She is now making her stage debut in the West End production of Cabaret .

We’re speaking the morning after you went to a Chelsea match. Are you a big fan?
I definitely was in childhood, so it was a treat to return. I grew up going to Stamford Bridge with my uncle. Gianfranco Zola was my favourite player. When I was eight, I refused to take off my Chelsea kit for a wedding, so I wore it beneath my bridesmaid’s dress. Luckily, the groom was a Chelsea fan too, so nobody minded.

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The comic snuggles her cats, goes to gymnastics, squeals in delight at vegan Yorkshire puddings

Sunday mornings? I recently bought this book called Morning Miracles . It’s all about getting up 90 minutes earlier for journalling, exercise, meditation and breathing. When I started, I felt like a CEO; I told everyone about how life changing it was. Day six, I binned it off, and have never looked back.

What do you do instead? I get up around 8am, then I go and see my two cats: I follow them around, trying to snuggle, to let them know they’re loved.

Sunday workout? I’m back into fitness now – a swim at the lido or some yoga. Sometimes I go to a gymnastics class. I’m no natural, and have been trying to master a front-flip for longer than I can remember.

What’s for lunch? I love a roast. A friend invited a few of us round for Sunday lunch the other week. I got there, and she’d just made a normal meal. Lunch-on-a-Sunday is not Sunday lunch. I was livid. Feed me vegan Yorkshire puddings and I’ll squeal in delight like a piggy.

Sundays growing up? If Dad picked us up, he’d take us to the Toby Carvery. There’s nothing wrong with a Toby Carvery… but also there is? Else we watched telly. Families weren’t so child-focused. We might have gone to a castle once with a sandwich, but that was it.

The dream day? Write some really good jokes; a cold-water swim; meet friends at a fireside pub table for games: Bananagrams, Scrabble. And then, ideally, someone would tuck me in.

Last thing at night? I fiddle myself silly… No, that’s not true. I’ve just started face yoga, thanks for noticing. I don’t want to go under the knife, so with this you pinch your cheeks and nose like a nutter to keep yourself looking young.

Lou Sanders tours the UK with her show, No Kissing In The Bingo Hall, from Feb 2025 ( lousanders.com )

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The theatre adaptation of Studio Ghibli’s beloved animation sold out in Japan in four minutes. As it comes to the UK, we meet the international team of creatives bringing its giant dragons and tiny soot sprites to life

The dragon stirs to life as Toby Olié plucks it up by its tail. He spirals it through the air and, quick as ripping off a plaster, tears the creature in two. “Even when he was curled up on the floor,” the puppet designer says, undoing another of the dragon’s joints, “he took up too much space.” Olié sticks the body back together, a little shorter but more malleable now, and the tail wriggles back into being.

Best known for his work on War Horse, Olié is holding a miniature prototype for Haku, a boy who transforms into an enormous serpentine dragon. Haku is one of the leading characters in Hayao Miyazaki’s exquisite animation Spirited Away, which has been adapted into a major stage production. For the last four years, the creative team have been conjuring, tweaking and perfecting Miyazaki’s world of gods and monsters in three dimensions. The full-sized dragon, for whom Olié took inspiration from fan art as well as close studies of the film, is now more than four metres long, with 4,000 hairs inserted individually down his spine, ears that pin back when he’s scared, and a body powerful enough to carry a child on his back as he flies.

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Ryan Gosling plays a stunt double searching for a missing Hollywood star, while Britain’s biggest pop star offers some Glastonbury-ready bangers

The Fall Guy
Out now
It’s nearly two months since Ryan Gosling gave us that iconic slice of Ken at the Oscars, and if you’re jonesing for another hit, that’s understandable. Here the former Mousketeer plays an ageing action choreographer on the trail of a missing A-lister for whom he once acted as stunt double.

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