Prophets review – a mysterious tale of faith at the end of the world

Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon This prequel to the TV series has one joust after another, spectacular stagecraft and plenty of modern resonance During the RSC’s 65 years, numerous Lears have lost their minds and frequent Caesars been slaughtered by their courts. Now, though, a tyrant new to its stages faces both fates. He is King Aerys II Targaryen, ancestor of one warring bloodline in Game of Thrones, the dramatisation of George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series of fantasy novels that helped TV streamers’ rise to global domination during eight HBO seasons from 2011 to 2019. Some may balk at an institution named for England’s greatest dramatist staging an American drama franchise. There is, though, a compelling economic imperative: rising costs due to current wars (a frequent problem for Martin’s ancient oligarchs too) and Covid-era debts now exacerbated by paying back government loans means that the RSC could use another big commercial transfer – as its musical Matilda may not be immortal...

Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh The SNL UK star’s romantic failures and house-share humiliations make for a fun hour of downbeat yet twinkling comedy A recent star of Saturday Night Live UK, Paddy Young is enjoying a moment of life-changing fulfilment and success. But “I’ve brought the worst plus-one to the party,” he says – by which he means himself. If ever the truism that money can’t buy you happiness needed demonstration, look no further than Young’s new show, Will Sir Be Laughing Alone? It finds the 35-year-old lamenting (as ever) the circularity of his domestic life, a luckless perma-bachelor doomed for ever to watch on as his housemates graduate to more grown-up, loved-up lives elsewhere. Young has cultivated the perfect persona to sell this sorry tale: a plangent northerner, half-turned away from the audience and side-eyeing us coyly with this or that tale of hapless manboyishness. Is it an act? Well, no, it’s an exaggeration, and part of the fun is to work out how sincere sad-sack Paddy really is, halfway through his three score years and 10, stuck in a house share with “three PS2s and not a lamp in sight”. He’s bothered not that his flatmate is having sex too noisily, but that it’s not audible enough (“Let me in!”). Ghosted by a recent date, he has resorted to stalking his first teenage kiss on Facebook, then all the way to Copenhagen, fantasising about inserting himself into her wholesome family life...

Molly O’Brien responds to an article by Natalie Morris about her five-day labour, while an NHS doctor shares her personal experience of feeling ‘othered’ It is not clear whether Natalie Morris’s labour began spontaneously or was induced (By day five of my labour, I didn’t want an ‘ideal birth’. I only wanted to survive, 6 August). Nevertheless, what is described is not a debate about “ideal birth”, but an account of undiagnosed labour dystocia. By day four she had contractions but no cervical dilatation, was exhausted, unable to sit down, and knew instinctively she needed help. These are features of pathophysiology that should have prompted reassessment. That failure was not ideology. It was a lack of education and training among both midwives and doctors in recognising difficult labour, also known as labour dystocia. This same issue, with tragic consequences, was highlighted in the Nottingham maternity review. That system’s failure receives far less attention than the “culture wars” surrounding birth...