One famous pirate lost out to a whole family of them when the Waterstone's Children's Book Prize was awarded.

Two very funny Shakespeares and an 18th-century romp join the wave of comedies rolling across the British stage

Sam Mendes was a hard act to follow as inaugural artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse.  But Michael Grandage overcame that difficulty with flamboyantly flying colours.

'Sometimes it all gets too much: two hours in a room with Ricky can seem a long time'

"Work is more fun than fun," Noel Coward once declared. As far as we know, though, Noel never had to drudge from nine to five in an office processing the timesheets of care-workers. That happens to be the fate of Marie, the twentysomething harried and likeable central character in Mongrel Island, Ed Harris's accomplished, if slightly trying play.

At the top of their Games

Thanks to the awkward realism of The Office, the traditional sitcom has spent the last decade firmly out of fashion. But as the success of Miranda proves, a show filmed in front of a live audience can still have the last laugh. By Tim Walker

When the battle still rages

It may not be Curb Your Enthusiasm but Modern Family, which adopts the kind of awkward, quasi-documentary style popularised by Larry David's cult comedy – still guarantees plenty of laughs.

As Modern Family screens on British TV, Sarah Hughes says that America has at last found its own Gavin & Stacey

The veteran director Peter Gill makes his belated debut at the Bush with this sensitive, beautifully acted production of The Aliens, our first glimpse in Britain of work by Annie Baker, the much-lauded young US dramatist. It's a deceptively slight piece that, while it can't live up to the plaudits of the New York critics (who reached for comparisons with Chekhov and Chardin), evinces a real talent for the kind of gentle humour that illustrates how the sadness and the silliness of life are interwoven.

Books: I've just started reading 'The Black Hand' by Chris Blatchford. It's a biography of a guy who dissented from the Mexican Mafia. Reading it you can tell he was super-intelligent and could have had a very different life. I've also been reading Freddie Foreman's autobiography. He was one of England's biggest criminals, bigger than the Kray twins, but he didn't do the press. I've known him for 15 years – he's a good friend of mine, and it's always interesting reading about someone you know.

Comedian Ricky Gervais is making a version of his hit show The Office for Chinese television, he said today.

Whenever a British gangster film lumbers on to the horizon one tends to fear a) the worst and b) the appearance of Danny Dyer.