Simon Callow's Man from Stratford

To see Simon Callow's one-man show Shakespeare: The Man from Stratford at the Bath Theatre Royal last night. In one of the last Main House shows before this summer's revamp of the historic theatre, Callow delivered another tour de force as he raced through the Bard's career interspersed with great speeches from his plays. Loosely -and inevitably - dividing his 90 minute monologue into the Seven Ages of Man, Callow took us from a Middle England childhood where young Will received a grounding in Latin grammar at Stratford grammar school, before working in his father's glove shop and marrying Anne Hathaway, through plague-ridden London to Shakespeare's time at the Globe and his retirement as a man of property to his home town. It is a thrilling story of small town politics, big city revenge, royal fickleness and apparently transient fame. Callow excels at this sort of show - as his earlier brilliant renditions of Wilde (the Micheal MacLiammóir version) and Dickens showed, and he thrilled his audience again last night as he moved effortlessly from historic narrative to dramatic impersonation. The play is touring through to Edinburgh, where it is sure to be a great hit.

Lenny Henry is a powerful Othello

It is a long time since I've seen anyone getting such rapturous applause as the Othello cast received at Bath's Theatre Royal last night. Lenny Henry is an extraordinarily powerful Othello, giving the role the emotion and physicality it demands with great gusto, supported by an excellent cast from the Northern Broadsides/West Yorkshire Playhouse company. The cast includes a suitably villainous Conrad Nelson as Iago, a heartrending Jessica Harris as a dimunitive, naive and terrified Desdemona and a powerful finale from Maeve Larkin as Emilia. Othello is a gripping and compelling play, yet too often Shakespeare can be drily presented on stage. This production shows what can be done with a great director and an imaginative cast.

A South African Tempest

Anthony Sher's Prospero has competition in dominating a cracking version of Shakespeare's The Tempest, jointly produced by the RSC and Cape Town's Baxter Theatre, which we saw last night in Bath. The African music, wonderful puppetry and spirited cast all add to the atmosphere in a lively production, which is currently on a short national tour. Sher is magnificent - of course - but there are also particularly good performances from Atandwa Kani as Ariel, John Kani as Caliban (pictured) and Tinarie Van Wyk Loots as Miranda. The production is a great example of how to fuse cultural traditions with Shakespeare in a way that greatly enhances one's enjoyment and feel for the play. It is well worth seeing.

Bypassing the Bard

The demise of Shakespeare in schools, evidenced by a fall off in demand at the RSC, is an entirely predictable outcome of the Government's decision to scrap Key Stage 3 tests. In many schools, the only reason the Bard was taught to less able pupils under 14 was because of its place on the curriculum and in the tests. Teachers believe they are exercising their professional judgment that a significant proportion of pupils find Shakespeare too difficult. For years, the curriculum authority had been trying to ditch this test but were resisted by successive secretaries of state.

But it was to ensure that everyone was exposed to England's greatest playwright that the National Curriculum gave his works such prominence. Those who demanded the demise of the tests - including the Schools Select Committee - should have understood this. The question we need to decide is whether every pupil should have an entitlement to certain subjects and experiences. By scrapping the Shakespeare test along with other KS3 tests, the decision was also effectively made to downgrade Shakespeare in schools. The only surprise is that the architects of this decision should be so surprised.