The best Marc Antolin’s movies

Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods weaves together many famous fairy tales in an allegorical story of family, love, growing up and the hazy areas between right and wrong. This production was captured by Digital Theatre live at London’s Regent’s Park Open Air theatre and was directed by Timothy Sheader. Into the Woods takes the stories of the Brothers Grimm and gives them a dark and humorous twist. The popular tales of Red Ridinghood, Jack (of Beanstalk fame), Cinderella and Rapunzel are interwoven with that of the Baker and his Wife and their quest to have a child. However this re-telling goes beyond "happily ever after" as the familiar characters find themselves in unfamiliar circumstances and hopes and dreams are questioned and revisited.

Angélique makes beautiful chocolates, carefully infused with all the emotion that seems to overwhelm her in daily life. Jean-René runs a chocolate factory that is running out of steam, rather like his own existence. Both seek help from the usual sources: Jean-René favours self-help tapes and Angélique joins a support group, Les Émotifs Anonymes. Romantics Anonymous is an unusual and tender love story in which the obstacles to happiness are not the usual external barriers, but those sneaky little ones we know all too intimately: the ones within.

Perhaps you’ve seen them floating over a Russian village? Or perhaps you’ve seen her toppling forward, arms full of wildflowers, as he arches above her head and steals an airborne kiss. Partners in life and on canvas, Marc and Bella Chagall are immortalised as the picture of romance. But whilst on canvas they flew, in life, they walked through some of the most devastating times in history. Daniel Jamieson’s The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk traces this young couple as they navigate the Pogroms, the Russian Revolution, and each other. Emma Rice’s sumptuous production is drawn in a theatrical language as fluid as Chagall’s paintings and woven throughout with music and dance inspired by Russian Jewish traditions.