Anita Amirrezvani returned to Iran several times while researching The Blood of Flowers. And John Murray has acquired a memoir from another Iranian ?gr? Marina Nemat, who was sentenced to death during the revolution and escaped with the help of a prison guard – on condition she marry him.. Bernard MacLaverty reaped the first financial fruits of his fiction while he was still at primary school. He went on to publish plays by Brecht, Sartre and Shelagh Delaney. It was Geoffrey Strachan who presided over its flowering, with authors such as Brenton, Hare, Pinter, Frayn and Mamet. Bloomsbury’s chairman and CEO, Nigel Newton, promised to “exploit its list fully” and to develop new talent, just as Methuen has always done Let’s hope the promise is kept. * Bertelsmann, owner of Random House, Transworld and the BMG record label, has put an end to speculation that it would end the year as a publicly traded company when it bought back the 25 per cent share owned by Groupe Bruxelles Lambert for €4.5bn – easy-peasy, when your bottom line is swollen by Dan Brown.

It was John Cullen, who presided over the Methuen list for 30 years, who forged its connection to the theatre, beginning with Jean Anouilh’s Antigone, which he’d seen in newly liberated Paris. The list was launched by Algernon Methuen in 1908 with Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. An era of publishing history has come to an end with the sale by Methuen of its drama list to Bloomsbury’s A&C Black division for £2.35m. Making his escape, Yoemon runs in a high-kicking stamp, faster and faster The crescendo isn’t quite smooth, but it makes an impact. The role is played emphatically , with broad, strong gestures.Ebizo XI is less persuasive as the Wisteria Maiden of Fuji Musume. He’s carefully demure, his movements are exact, and he moves his neck and shoulders elegantly in swaying turns.

But the images don’t become vivid.It’s only with Kasane that this performance crosses the cultural barriers.To 11 June (0870 737 7737). Having held his shoulders and torso in a feminine droop, Kamejiro now allows his body to relax and straighten, taking up more space as he rises. The vengeful Kasane seems to grow taller as we watch.Ebizo Ichikawa XI is a forceful Yoemon, though he lacks Kamejiro’s extraordinary flow of movement. Wounded, Kasane slides down a bank, landing on her knees with her back to the audience, falling back into a despairing back-bend. Kamejiro II builds this into a single, sweeping step, the movement huge and soft. Then, as Kasane reproaching Yoemon, he loosens his hair and pulls himself upright. The voiceover for the other show, Fuji Musume (The Wisteria Maiden), explains that the accompanying song is full of witty puns: a useful footnote, but it won’t actually make you laugh.

Explanations of Kasane’s contemporary social detail don’t actually draw you into the plot. And it’s hard to get past lines such as: “Remember your adopted father, now being punished for the loss of a treasured tea canister.”Yet Kasane is gripping. The lovers meet at night, in a highly decorative landscape, with reeds and paper flowers growing by a river. Dawn arrives with the fall of a curtain, showing the river winding through fields. Kasane (Kamejiro II) and Yoemon (Ebizo XI), unable to love each other openly, plan to kill themselves.

Then a skull floats down the stream, with a sickle and a grave-marker.Yoemon recoils when he reads the marker: this was a man he killed, after having seduced his wife Worse, the victim was Kasane’s natural father. The dead man’s ghost now possesses Kasane, the wounds of his eye and leg appearing on her body. In horror, Yoemon tries to kill her.The fight and death are long, gruesome and pictorially beautiful. At moments of high drama, the musicians sing for the actors, who are free to express their emotions in dance, in grand poses and intricate gestures. A fan will outline a landscape, a sleeve suggest a pillow or a cup.