Veteran stage and screen actor John Woodvine was in a stable condition in hospital today after collapsing while performing in a musical last night.

The World Shakespeare Festival is the centrepiece of the Cultural Olympiad, featuring 70 productions from across the world. Festival boss Deborah Shaw tells Arifa Akbar how it will cast the playwright in a whole new light.

“I need more mongness from you,” director Stephen Rayne calls across the hallowed, ancient auditorium of the Theatre Royal Haymarket.

You think twice about even letting kids walk the dog round the block these days which is a shame. I don't know whether Swallows and Amazons [Hannon has written the music for a new stage version] was quite fanciful for the 1930s – to let children go off on their own for a fortnight – but it wouldn't happen now. There's a lot of interesting themes going on [in Arthur Ransome's book] – mores concerning what you can let children do. I don't how much has really changed and how much is media-induced paranoia.

Fairyland is missing some magic

When Peter Hall founded the RSC in 1961, one of his guiding principles was that Shakespeare should be presented in dynamic, mutually illuminating relation to new playwrights. Harold Pinter was the linchpin of this policy. So, as the company celebrates its 50th birthday, it's fitting that it should programme a major revival of one the classic Pinter plays premiered under its auspices – even if the Swan Theatre, with its thrust stage and stacked, horse-shoe-shaped seating is an awkward space for such an intrinsically proscenium arch drama as The Homecoming (1965).

The long career of Margaret Tyzack, one of the most respected actresses of the British theatre, covered an impressive range, from Shakespeare, Racine, Pirandello and TS Eliot, to modern work from Edward Albee, Alan Bennett and Peter Shaffer

Shylock lives it up in Las Vegas

One of Britain's best actresses is happiest when playing taboo roles – but would rather not suffer the awards shindigs that mark her success. Emily Dugan meets Juliet Stevenson

The increasingly popular IGCSE exam makes the study of Shakespeare optional

One man's purgatory is another man's happiness in Philip Massinger's remarkable 1632 city comedy of social climbing and mercenary deceit. Oh, the raptures, for instance, of being hurried in a coach to Brentford, Staines, or Barnet for ten-pound suppers and the shaking of the sheets.

Shakespeare with a stylish Spanish twist

"Doubtful it stood..." are the first words spoken, three times over, by Scott Handy playing Ross, a character purloined by director Michael Boyd as his prompt, narrator and voice of conscience in this bloody tale of insurrection, religious fanaticism, child murder and revenge.

High-flyers come back down to earth