What's remarkable about the show is that it treats what strikes most people as bizarre with humor and respect.

A stunning feat of ingenious puppetry and inventive storytelling, this dystopian noir fantasy is both a solo show and a cornucopia of marvels.

What we hear on this recording is a virtuoso who makes it all sound easy, who draws deeply felt emotion and faery-dust thrills from her instrument with a feeling of effortlessness.

Tragic overtones aside, the smooth beauty of Emily Mure's music leaves a quietly happy echo, while Bob Bradshaw's 'American Echoes' shows a singer, songwriter, and bandleader in full command of his muse.

A bravura star turn by newcomer Amy Londyn stands out against prosaic lyrics and sketchily drawn characters in a new musical about the dawn of the Nazi era.

God and the Devil figure prominently in the Texas troubadour's magnificent and dark new opus. But it's music itself that's authentically sacred in the world he creates.

This is lively full-strength Shakespeare, a dizzying story of changing fortunes and changing sides, loyalty and betrayal, weakness and strength, war and more war, with only small and hesitant hopes for peace – and all made easy to follow and admire.

Though an experimental spirit hovers over her new album, Alison Moyet's writing mojo remains as strong as her forever-unmistakeable voice. 'Other' is as vital as anything she's ever done.

For Paz, language means more than just syntax and grammar; his "world before language exists" is something pre-life, a universe of abstraction that monkeys can't imagine but poets can.

The debut stage production of a 1985 BBC teleplay questions whether the two warring sides of human nature can ever be reconciled. The answer it suggests doesn't bode well. Yet as a polished, powerful, challenging piece of art itself, it offers a silver lining of hope too.