... Doctor Heart MANCHESTER THE British premiere of new musical, Doctor Heart is the Royal Exchange, Manchester. Starring Frances Tomelty as Momma, a wasted drunk and Andy Serkis as Doctor Jan Heart. Heart has invented a machine which makes the heroes of our imaginations real. Hence the play features Hamlet, Batman and Robin et al. The acting is generally inconsistent though Tomelty and Serkis ...

... Black Works ICA FIVE minutes after the advertised starting time, a girl comes on the vast bare black stage and begins to sweep up some white debris. Is this part of the show, you wonder, or a belated tidying up so that it can eventually begin? The girl is soon joined by two more performers spot lit in side lights. one is a man wno is inert and me other a woman who seems to be throwing him ...

... The Sisterhood CHICHESTER MOLIERK himself would surely be amongst those laughing loudest at the adaptation and translation of his play The Sisterhood by Ranjit Bolt at the Chichester Festival Theatre's Minerva Studio. The ideas expressed by Moliere reflected the intellectual women's movement of his own time and, in many ways, little has changed. Indeed, it is the modernity of the people and ...

... Starbrites TRICYCLE THEATRE THE INGENIOUS use of different-sized puppets creates a surreal sense of perspective in author/director Barney Simon's new play for the Market Theatre of Johannesburg. Unfortunately the script never matches the visual flair of this well- int 'ntioned Tricycle co-production with the London International Festival of Theatre. With corrugated iron city walls topped by ...

... The Soldier's Tale/Lucifer ALMEIDA WRITTEN by Diana Burrell for trumpet (Peter Lawrence) and violin (Madeleine Mitchell), Lucifer, an impressive new work, traces the fall of one once crowned with bliss. Intricate short violin passages inter weave with the trumpet, whose silvery sound declines into not musical notes but breathing, lost in pain. The infer nal one pops up again in Stravinsky's ...

... Too much effort, too little effect COLISEUM Ballet Nacional De Espana THE ensemble opening by the Ballet Naczional de Espana, as groups of dancers raised arms, walked and paused motionless--continuing the sequence until the stage was filled--was as effective as a first class chorus line, that compels with its precision, unity and zest. Called Ritmos, the piece developed into a display of fast ...

... Eugene Onegin METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE PROMOTED as the Bolshoi Opera's first new production ever to have its premiere abroad, the Eugene Onegin which opened the company's two-week season at the Metropolitan Opera looked suspiciously like a touring version. A semi-permanent set showing Mme Larina's house on two levels, looking a bit like a Victorian doll's house, did duty for the first four ...

... Tramway is back on the move GLASGOW Tramway Theatre will be reopening its doors this month after essential repair work with an impressive new £833,000 funding deal and exciting new season of conpemporary national theatre with companies from Scotland, Ireland, Wales and England. ...

... Caprice/It's Impossible To Think of Everything ROSE THIS is an enterprising choice of two short plays by Alfred de Musset, presented by De Musset and Company, administered by Paul Spence and Clara Koenig. Given here in what are, I think, their first English productions, they are both delightful acerbic one act plays charged with subtle comedy and cruelty rather in the style of Marivaux. ...

... The Loss Almanac Dance Art Company THE PLACE ADVANCE marketing for this performance promised more than it delivered. For the leaflet, featuring four dancers frolicking, alongside part of a house and part of a naked woman, focused on strange juxtapositions of people and objects, which could have produced any number of interesting philosophical musings. But there was a shortage of any such ...

... Breaking Legs BROADWAY TOM Dulack'* Breaking Legs has been staged in San Diego and at the Berkshire Theatre Festival, is due to be directed by Alan Ayckbourn in Scarborough, and is directed at the Promenade, one of the best off- Broadway theatres, by John Tilhnger. In addition it has a cast headed by two of New York's best character actors, Philip Bosco and Vincent Gardenia. They are ...

... Le Malade Imaginaire PARIS MOLIERE visits Disneyland, in an unconventional revival of the French Bard's Le Malade Imaginaire (The Hypochondriac) at the Comedic Francaise in Pans Not only does guest director Gildas Bourdet give all the members of the cast Pinocchio noses, he also sets them down in a Technicolor decor and dresses them a la Snow White and Cinderella Bourdet says his approach ...