THERE is always a place for skilful modern treatments of the classics and Tom Morris’s production of Cyrano de Bergerac, adapted by Peter Oswald, bubbled with a sparky contemporary wit.

In Edmond Rostand’s 19th-century French farce at the splendidly refurbished Bristol’s Old Vic — the oldest working theatre in the country — Tristan Sturrock's embarrassingly long-nosed hero displayed dynamic energy as the love-lorn swordsman-wordsmith, forced to conduct his inarticulate rival’s courtship of the woman he adores.

David Hare’s adaptation of Ibsen’s epic dramatic poem Pier Gynt, here a more homely Peter Gynt, received mixed reviews at the National Theatre in London but when I saw it in Edinburgh it was justifiably one of the festival’s triumphs.

Hare translates his protagonist’s egotistical fantasist into a parable for our times, with James McArdle’s Peter moving from youth through mid-life to old age and death as he clings to the Thatcherite myth that there is no such thing as society.

If this sounds heavy going, the underlying message was carried by the comedy while Jonathan Kent’s direction and Richard Hudson’s magically transforming set designs never allowed the production to flag.

Any American can become president but if they don’t they can always shoot one. That's borne out in Stephen Sondheim’s provocative 1992 cabaret style Assassins, which may not be as well-known as West Side Story but it certainly hits its target — the grotesque gun culture in the US.

Bill Buckhurst’s joint production for Newbury’s delightful Watermill Theatre and Nottingham Playhouse brought out all the show's wit, while a multi-talented cast, playing a range of instruments, examine the motives of nine of the successful and would-be assassins of American presidents from John Wilkes Booth to Lee Harvey Oswald, revealing a group identity and a telling commentary on the American Dream.

That dream myth features in the revival of Terry Johnson’s Prism at Birmingham Rep, his biographical take on the life of Jack Cardiff, the cinematographer who did so much to create Hollywood.

Using his technicolor camera with the artistic genius of a painter in light he made many of the great films of tinseltown and the reputations of screen beauties like Marilyn Munroe, Ava Gardner and Sophia Loren.

Robert Lindsay, superb as Cardiff, slips into dementia and, reliving his triumphs, slid between his dual worlds of a reality losing its shape and the Hollywood dreamscapes of his films.

Where the RSC’s main house Shakespeare has had a bumpy ride, it came up with what must rate as one of the outstanding plays of the year.

Kunene and the King at Stratford-upon-Avon’s Swan theatre was one of those experiences that transcends the world of theatre and mirrors the ways history shapes human relationships at every level.

Written by South African John Kani, of Siswa Bansi is Dead fame, the play celebrated the 25th anniversary of the end of apartheid.

In this two-hander, Kani as Kunene plays a middle-aged medical carer for white South African Jack Morris (Antony Sher). He's an ageing Shakespearean actor fighting terminal liver cancer in order to prepare for the acme of his career, the role of King Lear in a major production.

Kunene struggles to cope with an awkward patient wallowing in sardonic disgust at his situation and who has to learn, just as Shakespeare’s Lear does, that fellow human beings in a fraught world must share more than what divides them.

There is no happy end. Kunene asks his resentful patient: “I voted for Mandela because I wanted a better future. You got your protection. Did I get my better future?”

The fact that this acclaimed production in Britain, now in London, was less well received in South Africa sadly answers Kunene’s question.