A critical mauling: Brian Logan on comedy critics being portrayed as horrible snobs

Saturday marks the 5th anniversary of the current Taliban rule in Aghanistan. They've had a devastating impact on girls' education. A lesser told story is their impact on the education of boys.

A play based on the writer’s dreamlike novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is touring the world, riding a wave of interest in Japanese culture. Its creators talk about how they adapted the famously cryptic tale Tatsuya Fujiwara is no stranger to London’s Barbican theatre. It was here nearly 30 years ago that one of Japan’s biggest film stars, now 44, made his stage debut. He was just 15, plucked out of an audition of more than 5,000 hopeful youngsters by the revered theatre director Yukio Ninagawa for his play Shintoku-Maru. It kickstarted Fujiwara’s career, and three years later he landed a role in the cult dystopian film Battle Royale, going on to star in hit TV dramas and blockbuster films, all the while continuing to perform in Ninagawa’s acclaimed productions. Now, Fujiwara returns to where it all began, to perform in a stage adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s science fiction novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. The story alternates between two seemingly unrelated narratives: a cyberpunk thriller set in Tokyo, and a surreal fantasy that unfolds within a mysterious walled town. Directed by the French choreographer Philippe Decouflé, the play premiered in Tokyo in January, toured Japan until March, then Singapore in April. After the Barbican run this autumn, the tour will wrap up in Paris...

Various venues, Edinburgh From queer narratives to secret histories, this year celebrates the underground and the unheralded. Our writer uncovers so many stories, he feels like Columbo By the time you’re done with Edinburgh art festival you’ll have uncovered so many hidden stories you’ll feel like Columbo. We’re talking queer narratives, secret histories, undiscovered archives: the whole festival is a celebration of the underground and unheralded. You can’t walk into a gallery without learning about some subcultural genius or longlost creative you’ve never heard of. That’s not a bad MO for a city-wide art festival. But EAF is also a big, unwieldy, confusing thing. There are curated displays, satellite exhibitions, performances, off-site projects, and it’s impossible to figure out how any of it fits together. You’ve just got to follow your nose and hope you sniff out something you like. And you’d better like photography, because there’s a lot of it here...