麻豆社

Olivier Award winning actress Juliet Stevenson is about to take to the stage as 鈥淲innie鈥� in Samuel Beckett鈥檚 鈥� Happy Days鈥� which opens in London next month.

In Happy Days Beckett conceived one of the most memorable opening images in theatre: that of a middle-aged woman buried up to her waist in a great mound of earth. For his heroine, day and night are no more, the hours of waking and sleeping are signified by the ringing of a bell, and so it is that Winnie confronts her existential despair with absurd diversions and distractions, lurches of optimism and fragments of memories.

Her dogged efforts to resist hopelessness and despair remain as potent a reminder of human resilience as when the play was first written in 1961.

Happy Days opens at the Young Vic Theatre, London, on the 13th February and runs until the 21st March.

The incredibly successful author M.C Beaton has sold over 15 million books worldwide and is the most borrowed in UK adult author in libraries. She is just about to publish her 30th book 鈥淒eath Of A Liar鈥� which is part of the hugely popular Hamish Macbeth series.

Death of a Liar is published 5th of February by Constable.

1. Inherant Vice

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Cast: Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Eric Roberts and Katherine Waterston.

Woozy 70s LA Noir with Joaquin Phoenix as the bamboozled dope-addled

PI at the centre of one of cinema鈥檚 most labyrinthine missing person鈥檚 case

Inherent voice is out today rated 15.

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2. Kingsman: The Secret Service

Director: Matthew Vaughn

Cast: Colin Firth Egerton and Samuel L Jackson

Comic Book Bond parody for the millennial generation. From the film makers that brought you Kick-Ass and Kick-Ass 2, comes the story of a regular Saf Landan geezer (Taron Egerton) who joins a lethal cadre of posh assassins.

The Kingsman: The Secret Service is out now and rated 15.

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3. Trash

Director: Daldry

Cast: Martin Sheen, Rooney Mara and Wagner Moura.

Stephen Daldry and Richard Curtis, bring us the story of kids in the slums of Rio deJaneiro on the run from the mob and certain death, following their discovery of terrible secrets about political corruption that goes all the way to the top.

Trash is out today and rated 15.

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DVD Release: A Walk Among The Tombstones

Director: 听Scott Frank

Cast: Liam Neeson, Dan Stevens, Boyd Holbrook, Ruth Wilson, Sebastian Roch茅, Whitney Able, Stephanie Andujar

A drama thriller about a private detective who is hired to track down those responsible for the kidnapping and murder of the wives of men involved in the drug trade.

Winner of the Costa Book Awards, Helen MacDonald won with her biography 鈥淗 is for Hawk鈥�. This is the sixth biography to take the overall prize and the first in 10 years.

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As a child, Macdonald is determined to become a falconer. When her father dies and she is grief stricken becomes obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk. She buys Mabel for 拢800 on a Scottish quayside and takes her home to Cambridge.听 She then embarks on the long, strange business of trying to train this wildest of animals.

The 麻豆社 Symphony Orchestra will be hosting one of their Total Immersion events on Saturday and it鈥檚 the first ever to be dedicated to a specific area of the orchestra- the percussion. Throughout the day there will be many different workshops and events going on including: A free talk about Wolfgang Rihm's Tutuguri, Two free workshops based on Steve Reich's Clapping Music and Guildhall School musicians perform Steve Reich鈥檚 Music for Pieces of Wood.

The Total Immersion events are being held at The Barbican, London from 10am and there are a limited amount of tickets available.

1. The Hard Problem听

This is the new, eagerly-awaited Tom Stoppard play which is all about a psychology student who becomes obsessed with the concept of goodness. It's also Nicholas Hytner's farewell production as director of the National Theatre.

The Hard Problem runs at the National's Dorfman Theatre until April.

2. Oppenheimer

A brand-new play by a young writer, Tom Morton-Smith, about J Robert Oppenheimer: the man who in 1942 was put in charge of the scientists working to make the first atomic bombs at Los Alamos, New Mexico. John Heffernan plays Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer plays at The Swan in Stratford-upon-Avon until March 7th.

3. The Ruling Class

James McAvoy was an impressive Macbeth last year at the Trafalgar Studios. Now he's playing the 14th Earl of Gurney in a revival of Peter Barnes's 1968 black comedy. In the first half, the Earl thinks he's the God of Love and is classified as mad. In the second half, he reverts to being a brutal aristocrat and is deemed totally sane.

The Ruling Class runs at the Trafalgar Studios, London until April 11th.

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4. The Changeling

Hattie Morahan, who won countless awards in Ibsen's A Doll's House, now plays the lead in this dark Jacobean tragedy by Middleton and Rowley. This time she plays the Spanish heroine, Beatrice-Joanna, who hires a villain to murder an unwanted suitor and then finds she's stuck with him, as well as on him.

The Changeling runs at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London until March 1st.