| FRIDAY 19TH SEPTEMBER 22.30 BST - BBC TWO A new golden age of theatre? Kenneth Branagh has got rave reviews this week for his performance in Ivanov - a rarely performed Chekov play which has been adapted by Tom Stoppard. We'll be reviewing it tonight. Ivanov is the first play in a year-long season that the Donmar Warehouse is bringing to a big, mainstream West End theatre - Wyndhams. Judi Dench and Derek Jacobi will take on big roles during the season, which culminates in Jude Law's Hamlet, directed by Branagh. Branagh's performance is one of many recent interpretations of big, classic roles that have had the critics salivating - David Tennant's Hamlet, Patrick Stewart's Macbeth, Kristin Scott Thomas in The Seagull are others that leap to mind. It's got us wondering here at Review - are we in the throes of a new golden age of theatre? Are weighty plays more popular than ever and five star performances more common than ever? What do you think has prompted it? And to which recent theatre performances would you give a five star review? Tell us what you think on the Newsnight Review blog We're also discussing a film called The Wave on tonight's show - about a classroom experiment to illustrate the effects of dictatorship which goes disastrously wrong. We asked teenagers what they made of the film - you can read their essays here | 
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