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The British actor stars on Broadway in Sophie Treadwell's 1928 expressionist drama following a woman to the electric chair

Rebecca Hall will make her Broadway debut tonight (16 January), in a new production of the expressionist drama Machinal, which follows a young woman to her execution by electric chair. Hall plays the unnamed lead in a role inspired by Ruth Snyder who, in 1928, became the first woman executed at Sing Sing prison, in New York, in almost 30 years. Sophie Treadwell's play opened to a rapturous critical reception eight months after Snyder's execution.

The current revival for Roundabout Theatre Company, staged by Chimerica director Lyndsey Turner, has been previewing at the American Airlines theatre since 20 December. It runs in a limited engagement until 2 March 2014.

Machinal aims to set out the story behind Snyder's case, which Treadwell, a journalist and playwright, felt was lost amid the sensationalism caused by a front-page photograph...

Interview Louisa Mellor 10 Dec 2013 - 07:00

The last but not least of our Sherlock series 3 round-table interviews from back in April, with John Watson himself, Martin Freeman...

Happily, Martin Freeman will be unavoidable for the next few weeks. First, he's headlining The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, out in the UK and around the world on Friday the 13th of December. Just over a fortnight after that, we'll see him return to the role of John Watson, a man about to have his graveside wish - that Sherlock perform one last miracle and not be dead - granted.

The Holmes/Watson reunion, we're told, will be less about the resolution to the two-year-old question of how Sherlock survived his rooftop fall, and more about John's reaction. No small amount of pressure rests on Freeman's shoulders then, not that it was in evidence as we spoke to him in a round-table interview in April,...

Kieran Kinsella

Appropriately enough for this time of year, Acorn Media’s latest batch of DVD releases includes The Fall. It’s a Belfast based psychological crime drama in which Dsi Stella Gibson attempts to hunt down a sadistic serial killer who seems to delight in deviousness. Somewhat unusually for a crime drama, the killer is identified fairly early on as Paul Spector. Thereafter, Spector and Gibson become embroiled in a game of cat and mouse that lasts through five suspensful episodes. The relationship between Spector and Gibson is similar to the one involving Hannibal Lector and Clarice except for the fact that Lector was banged up while Spector is on the loose.

X-Files actress Gillian Anderson takes on the role of Gibson and she seems quite at home on British TV these days having enjoyed success in recent hits such as Great Expectations. Her nemesis is the rather less...

Without going into the specifics of Downton Abbey's third season — which has not aired in the United States, and is therefore still spoiler-protected — let us just say that Lady Edith Crawley continues to receive the short ends of various sticks. Turns out her real life ain't much easier: Poor Laura Carmichael debuted in a West End production of Uncle Vanya the other night, only to be heckled by famous director (and father to Rebecca) Peter Hall. "Stop, stop, stop," he apparently yelled during the final scene. "It doesn't work and you don't work. It is not good enough. I could be at home watching television." Aw. Even Lady Mary wouldn't do that (if only for propriety's sake). Leave Edith be.Update: Hall has apologized, saying he "was 'briefly disorientated' after waking from a brief doze." Yeah, and the Fake Patrick patient was "briefly disorientated" after having half his face...

After a five-film 'apprenticeship' in America, the English director's first British movie is the 007 picture Skyfall. Here, stars including Daniel Craig and Naomie Harris reveal exclusively what it is like working with him

Sam Mendes has proper English credentials. He grew up amid the spires and meadows of Oxford, where cricket was his passion. Taking a first in English at Cambridge, he then spent time in the provincial city of Chichester, learning how to handle the theatrical types who strut across British stages.

Yet Mendes, who has been hailed since American Beauty in 1999 as a leading Hollywood film-maker, has taken a long time to come home. Now after five films, each fairly hardboiled takes on life across the Atlantic, he is trumpeting his return to British cinema by directing the latest instalment in the most quintessentially English franchise of them all: James Bond.

It is a twist that amuses his star and friend,...