Minerva theatre, Chichester
Jamie Bogyo’s debut play recounts the renaming of a Yale University college with broadstroke humour and some exquisitely sung a cappella interludes

What happens when public statues stop serving as historical markers of civic pride and become offensive to many in the present? Sometimes they are forcibly toppled, such as in the case of 17th-century slave trader, Edward Colston, whose bronze statue was rolled into Bristolian waters in 2020 . But several years before that, there was protest over Yale University’s Calhoun College, named in honour of 19th-century alumnus, John C Calhoun, a white supremacist and zealous advocate of slavery ( the college was renamed after Grace Murray Hopper in 2017).

The demand for its renaming is the subject of this debut play by writer-actor Jamie Bogyo, who is a Yale alumnus himself. A fictive statue of Calhoun sets the culture wars into full swing; a petition, organised by Omar (Ivan Oyik), is circulating the dorms. Connor (Bogyo) is its main opponent. He rails against virtue signalling and snowflakes, but insists he is not racist (“I voted for Obama”). He also tries to co-opt his Black room-mate, Isaiah (Ernest Kingsley Jr), for his cause. Meanwhile, Connor’s girlfriend, Annabelle (Céline Buckens), who comically manifests all the signs of white guilt, has ambitions to become president of Yale’s Women’s Leadership, but is pipped by freshman Stacy (Bola Akeju).

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The American author discusses our need for fiction in an age of disconnection, the challenges of growing up with 14 step-siblings, and why she’s going ‘all in’ on romance

The cover of Lily King’s new novel, Heart the Lover, features an abstracted face sobbing white tears on a tangerine background. It is an appropriate image, given that so many early readers – from BookTokkers to fellow authors – have reported weeping uncontrollably during the book’s final third.

For King, the reaction was unexpected. “I certainly felt a lot of emotion while I was writing. Not sobbing, more a deeper grief,” she says. But she describes the writing of her sixth novel, which begins with a 1980s college love story then revisits the same characters in middle age, as a joyful experience. “It was really great to just go back to the 1980s and college. It was a relief.”

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Andrew Ross Sorkin’s new book 1929 takes readers back to the crash that changed the US and looks at what we can learn from it today

Andrew Ross Sorkin’s first book, Too Big to Fail , was a bestseller about the financial crisis of 2008, published the following year. His second, 1929, out this week, takes readers “Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History – and How it Shattered a Nation”.

It’s been 16 years between books, but Sorkin hasn’t been idle. A columnist for the New York Times, he founded its DealBook newsletter and summit; he’s a Squawk Box co-anchor for CNBC; and after Too Big to Fail was filmed by HBO, he co-created Billions, a huge hit for Showtime starring Damian Lewis and Paul Giamatti.

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He first played Othello in 1997, when the role was still synonymous with white thespians ‘blacking up’. Now, nearly three decades on, he, Chiwetel Ejiofor and other Black actors discuss how best to tackle Shakespeare’s formidable tragedy

“I had no intention of playing this character again. But as soon as the light went on, the house caught fire – and it’s been burning ever since.” David Harewood is talking about Othello, ahead of a new production from the Tony award-winning director Tom Morris that opens in London’s West End on 23 October. The production, which also features Toby Jones as Iago and Caitlin Fitzgerald as Desdemona, sees Harewood return to the role almost 30 years after his landmark performance at the National Theatre.

When he took on Othello in 1997, it was the second time he’d done so in his then-short career. The first was at the Swan theatre in Worcester six years earlier – an opportunity for him to familiarise himself with a text he’d certainly revisit in the future, his agent at the time told him. Now he was at the Cottesloe (renamed the Dorfman in 2014) as the first Black man to play Othello on a National Theatre stage.

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The singer and Last Shadow Puppets frontman has come a long way from buying No Limit at Woolworths, but what song can make him cry?

The song I do at karaoke
I don’t like karaoke, but if I’d had a few vodkas, I’d go for My Way by Frank Sinatra and absolutely smash it. I love the lyrics: “Regrets, I’ve had a few / But then again, too few to mention.” You know it’s going to be a crowd pleaser. I like the Robbie Williams version as well.

The best song to play at a party
Whenever I have people around, I’ll put on some Motown. It takes me back to family parties where my nan and mum would be dancing. Can’t Help Myself by the Four Tops is a great feeling of coming together. If you were wanting to feng shui the air in a room, a bar or a club, Motown makes you feel good.

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Strange New Worlds finally lands on ITV1 for Trekkies. Plus: the pressure is on in the penultimate episode of thrilling crime drama Frauds. Here’s what to watch this evening

10.20pm, ITV1

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Nu-metal group says Rivers ‘brought a light and a rhythm that could never be replaced’

Sam Rivers, the bassist and backing vocalist of the US nu-metal group Limp Bizkit, has died at the age of 48, the band has said.

Limp Bizkit announced the death in a social media post, describing Rivers as the band’s “heartbeat”. “Today we lost our brother. Our bandmate. Our heartbeat,” the band wrote.

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The Black Panther star made her name with intense roles in indie films before Marvel came calling. Now she’s telling her own stories, starting with a cast of ‘young kings’

Days before we meet, Letitia Wright found herself cheek-by-jowl with a far-right march in London. This is the year when St George’s flags have been displayed in suburban windows and tied to lamp-posts, and when thousands of people – some more intimidating than others, especially to people of colour – have marched on the centre of the capital and beyond. A friend of Wright’s was visiting the city, and they had moseyed down to the South Bank, unaware of what awaited them. “It was jam-packed,” she says, recalling their struggle to get out of the fray. “I  was in the middle of it, and then I was out of it. They were doing their thing – and I was doing mine.”

The actor has played refugees twice: once in the BBC Three drama Glasgow Girls , where she portrayed a Somali teenager, Amal, and then in the 2022 film Aisha, where she took on the role of a woman from Nigeria navigating Ireland’s often Kafkaesque immigration system. With this insight – and as a black woman – how does it feel to see far-right rhetoric being spread in the way that it is now? “Sometimes people need to see the humanity behind these things that they assume the worst of, which isn’t true,” she says. “And I’m an immigrant, my parents are immigrants … It’s an interesting conversation. And it’s interesting to see [it unfold] in a country that has done so much to other countries historically …” She was close to the London Eye when she caught sight of the march, but also a rainbow in the sky. “I try and find the peace,” she says, sounding – understandably – a little exhausted by it all.

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New adaptations of Emma, Pride and Prejudice and Charlotte Brontë’s Wuthering Heights explore slavery, pervy nuns and death in childbirth. Count me in!

News that Andrew Davies – the man behind the nation’s most beloved Pride and Prejudice adaptation – is planning to have Jane Austen’s Emma die in childbirth drew gasps from audiences at Cliveden literary festival last weekend. Davies is planning to explore the dark undercurrents of Austen’s work in adaptations of Emma, Mansfield Park and unfinished novel The Watsons, and while his ideas may shock those fans wedded to Austen as a romcom author, I couldn’t be happier.

I have always loved a period drama, especially literary adaptations. A few years ago, though, Austen fatigue set in for me. Maybe it’s the fact I’ve seen at least three Emmas and three Pride and Prejudices, and read each of her novels at least thrice. There are so many other stories in the world, many waiting to be discovered and adapted. Unless there was some new spin or interpretation being offered, I simply stopped being interested.

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist

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