Follow along for updates, pictures, reviews and more, with sets by Janelle Monáe, Steel Pulse and Kim Gordon to come, with the National and more to come

Pyramid stage, 12.30pm

This performance couldn’t be more diametrically opposed to that of the previous band to play this stage. Where Coldplay last night brought pyro, fireworks, LED wristbands, lasers, guest vocalists, Afrobeat legends, and projections of K-poppers BTS on the side of the Pyramid, blues musician Seasick Steve has a drummer, a guitarist, and a guitar made out of a Mississippi numberplate. “I made it,” he says. “It’s a piece of shit.” There is a guest star in the form of a barefoot harmonica player, but Steve barely even stands up. With Coldplay’s confetti decaying amid the woodchippings underfoot, the crowd are taken back down to earth after the intergalactic scale of the night before.

The Troxy, London E1
Undimmed by the decades, the Deal sisters mark the 30th anniversary of their classic album Last Splash with a masterclass in off-kilter melody

The first thing that twin Breeders guitarists Kim and Kelley Deal do when they hit the stage is begin feverishly adjusting their amps and effects pedals, calibrating their racket just so. The late Steve Albini, who engineered multiple albums for the four-piece, once noted band leader Kim Deal’s “absolute persistence in trying to achieve the sound in her head”. It was gushing hyperbole from a man known for his acid tongue.

The sound in Deal’s head remains both redolent of the grunge era, and gloriously, goofily free of it. The Breeders deal in bounding basslines, sticky guitars, weird noises and Kim’s own melodic vocals – all present on Saints, the band’s opening track tonight – and re-administered at various titrations across the course of 90 minutes. “Summer is ready when you are!” sings Deal sweetly, of the pleasures of going to the fair – her midwestern girl-next-door manner long providing camouflage for the obsessive sound architect within.

The side-splitting Something Rotten! fondly mocks Shakespeare and musicals at the annual arts jamboree celebrated for both. It is a witty accompaniment to fresh takes on Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night and Cymbeline

Something is rotten in the province of Ontario. It is the second number of the tentpole musical at Canada’s Stratford festival, the Shakespeare jamboree that has celebrated the British Bard of Avon for more than 70 years. This is a town where a street, a school and a pet hospital are called Romeo. But what’s that I hear? “God, I hate Shakespeare!” fumes the fellow on the revolutionary thrust stage of Stratford’s Festival theatre, asking how “a mediocre actor from a measly little town” managed to become “the brightest jewel in England’s royal crown”. The sacrilege rages on as the showboating Bard himself strides on to hog the spotlight for the song Will Power, and the “sultan of sonnets” brandishes a huge quill like a mic and shamelessly flirts with fans.

Bawdy, barmy and almost incessantly hilarious, Something Rotten! is the standout show of the 2024 Stratford season, fusing the festival’s two major traditions of Shakespeare and musical theatre. This Renaissance tale of budding playwright brothers Nick and Nigel Bottom (Mark Uhre and Henry Firmston), toiling in the shadow of the all-conquering Shakespeare (Jeff Lillico), picked up 10 Tony award nominations on its premiere in 2015 including best score (for brothers Wayne and Karey Kirkpatrick) and best book (co-written by longtime Guardian columnist John O’Farrell). Despite such success, it has inexplicably taken almost a decade for it to receive a UK premiere – but now a concert version will be staged for two nights at London’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane in August.

Political art helps us debate and confront the challenges in our lives. It is also a record we must return to again and again

‘A play should be an act of moral imagination,” said the late British playwright Edward Bond, who died three months ago and who, in his lifetime, spoke about theatre’s absolute right to address the most difficult issues of its day.

Perhaps a revival ought to be an act of moral imagination, too. So I found myself thinking this week while I watched a verbatim drama from 2005 at the Old Red Lion theatre in north London, amid a packed audience. My Name Is Rachel Corrie is about the 23-year-old American who travelled to the Gaza Strip in 2003 to aid Palestinians living under occupation and was killed by an Israeli bulldozer.

The London five-piece are due to have this year’s Glastonbury moment – the cherry on four years of hard work. But from accusations about their authenticity to the speed of their rise, they say success has been ‘disturbing’

The annual scramble for Glastonbury tickets is a rite of passage – and Georgia Davies is used to disappointment. “I’d been trying to get tickets for years,” she says. “It never worked.” But last year, she and her friends found a workaround. “The trick is to play it,” she says with a grin.

Davies plays bass in Britain’s most talked-about young band, the Last Dinner Party (TLDP). The baroque-pop five-piece have had a staggering rise since forming in the pandemic, fuelled by their maximalist, nihilistic debut single, Nothing Matters, released in April 2023. Two months later, they played Glastonbury’s Woodsies stage, clocking off just after noon to enjoy the rest of the festival. It was “the best feeling ever”, says the rhythm guitarist, Lizzie Mayland: the thrill of performing, plus the freedom of being a punter.