Petra Costa's 'troubling' portrait of modern Brazil

This chilling documentary from filmmaker Petra Costa "tells a grim story about modern Brazil", said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. It explains how right-wing evangelical Christianity has seduced many of the country's political leaders and millions of its people: in the past 30 years, Costa tells us, the evangelical share of the population has risen from 5% to 30%.

And through its substantial voting bloc in the national congress, the religious Right has effectively created "a minority-rule theocracy". American televangelists such as Billy Graham made inroads into the majority Catholic nation after the Second World War; and how today, figures such as Pastor Silas Malafaia, a celebrity evangelist who became a major influence on the former president, Jair Bolsonaro, are wildly popular.

Costa has somehow managed to get fantastic access to her subjects, said Ellen E. Jones in The Observer. Even Bolsonaro features, presented as a "dead-eyed marionette" to Malafaia's charismatic puppet master. The film is a lament for secularism, said Bilge Ebiri in New York Magazine. Even in the dark days of Brazil's military dictatorship, Costa says, religion and government remained separate. But today, politicians of Left and Right are careful to court the evangelical vote. 

Archive footage of Brasília, showing how the newly built capital's architecture manifested the separation of Church and state, is contrasted with the horrifying Maga-inspired mob assault on the city in 2023. Costa ends on a relatively hopeful note, but cautions that even with Bolsonaro gone, "religious fanaticism" remains as influential as ever. It all points to a "troubling and uncertain future".

Beloved character from Henry IV plays gets his own comedic adventure at London's Globe Theatre

"Even the most hardcore Bardolator" would concede that "The Merry Wives of Windsor" is not one of Shakespeare's better works, said Andrzej Lukowski in Time Out. It's a daft, flawed, and "canonically illogical" spin-off from the Henry IV plays that gives the beloved character of Sir John Falstaff a brand-new comic adventure – wooing the wealthy wives of Windsor in the hope of making some money.

The play lacks the "pathos and grit of his original appearances", and sidesteps the fact that Falstaff died 200 years before the manifestly "present-day" action. Rather than try and "fix" any of this, Sean Holmes' entertaining new staging leans strongly into the daftness, with a "relentless barrage of absurdist line deliveries and outlandish character interpretations". It's "pathologically silly", but so long as you're not expecting too much, "you'll have fun".

You certainly will, said Nick Curtis in London's The Standard. A crack cast of comic actors makes this production a "treat". Falstaff is played by George Fouracres, a Black Country comedian-turned-actor who has "brought revelatory zest to several Shakespearean clowns at the Globe in recent years". 

He's terrific, working the audience with wit and charm. Katherine Pearce's saucy Mistress Ford and Emma Pallant's beady Mistress Page have the "fine timing and physical ease of a practised double-act as they dupe and then punish Falstaff for his impudence". Sophie Russell as pragmatic fixer Mistress Quickly and Samuel Creasey as the effete Welsh priest, Hugh Evans, also win big laughs.

It makes for a "jolly" evening, said Clive Davis in The Times. I found myself wishing I was in the pit with the "groundlings", to soak up the atmosphere.
It's all "entertainingly" done, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. But overall, this theatrical cake fails to rise. Fouracres is a far younger and more sprightly Falstaff than the "plus-sized buffoon" that the plot and jokes require. And he "doesn't fully dominate proceedings as you'd hope; the supporting cast often garner the belly-laughs". This is an enjoyable show that's "suitable for tourists", but it "falls short of being a summer sensation for all".

Globe Theatre, London SE1. Until 20 September 

Fearsome politician who served as Thatcher's enforcer

One of the defining politicians of his age, Norman Tebbit, who has died aged 94, was among Margaret Thatcher's most steadfast supporters. A self-made man who had grown up in a working-class suburb of north London, he helped draw millions of former Labour voters to the Thatcherite cause by championing the virtues of hard work, self-reliance and enterprise, while railing against everything from European federalism and unionism to the permissive society, said The Times.

Courageous and quick-witted, Tebbit was almost as combative with the Tory "wets" as he was with the Left – and he could be fearsome with both. In the Commons, he once shouted "You'll have another heart attack!" to a Labour MP with heart disease, said The Guardian. His "Spitting Image" puppet depicted him as a bovver boy in a leather jacket. The Labour leader Michael Foot referred to him as a "semi-housetrained polecat"; and he was nicknamed the "Chingford Skinhead". Yet when they met him, said The Daily Telegraph, people were often surprised to find him amiable, softly spoken and compassionate. 

Even Tebbit's opponents conceded that he was a "minister of substance", and he seemed destined for high office – until 1984, when he was almost killed in the IRA's bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton, during the Tory conference. He and his wife Margaret were asleep in bed at the time. As the building caved in, they fell four storeys and were buried under rubble: seriously injured, they lay there, holding hands, for four hours. Tebbit spent three months in hospital and was left in daily pain. Margaret was in hospital for nearly two years. Paralysed from the chest down, she never walked again. Tebbit returned to work, but after the 1987 election he left government so that he could devote more time to "my Margaret". 

Norman Tebbit was born in Ponders End, Enfield, in 1931. His father ran a pawnbroker's shop – until he lost his job. He found work as a painter, but money was tight and they moved into cramped rented rooms. Norman won a place at Edmonton County Grammar and, soon after, he joined the local Young Conservatives – becoming one of its few working-class members. At 16, he left school to become a copy boy at the Financial Times. There, he was made to join the print union, which fuelled his opposition to closed shops. He did his national service in the RAF. He learnt to fly, and in 1953 he became a pilot with BOAC (and an official in the pilots' union). Around the same time, he met Margaret, a nurse. They married in 1956 and went on to have three children. 

Living in Hemel Hempstead, he joined the local Conservative Association, and in 1970, he was elected as MP for Epping (a constituency that was later abolished and redrawn as Chingford). As a backbencher, he opposed the admission of 30,000 Asians who had been expelled from Uganda, and railed against militant unionism. His loathing of the unions intensified when Margaret, who suffered from severe depression, was unable to get treatment on the NHS owing to strikes. He was, he recalled, determined to break their power – and in 1981, when he became secretary of state for employment, he made that his mission. He regarded the 1982 Employment Act – which greatly restricted the formation of closed shops – as among his greatest achievements. Then in 1983, when Cecil Parkinson, his friend and cabinet rival, was forced to resign, Tebbit took over at the department of trade and industry. In that role, he pushed through many of the privatisations of the Thatcher era. 

As party chairman from 1985, he threw himself into Thatcher's 1987 election campaign. But her popularity was by then waning, and he and Michael Heseltine were being mentioned as possible successors. He insisted that his loyalty was total, and she won the election; but relations were strained. Retiring to the backbenches enabled him to take several directorships to fund his wife's care. In 1992, he was elevated to the House of Lords (he included a polecat in his coat of arms). He wrote his memoirs, as well as a cookbook, while continuing to make waves with his comments on issues including Europe, gay marriage and immigration. Margaret died in 2020, having suffered from dementia. Tebbit made his final appearance at Westminster in 2022, aged 90.