... who was a prostitute by the time she was ten and whose stage career was foundering at the time she met the man she was to marry twice. It is the brainchild of Judith Paris, a skilled actress and singer who wrote the script and persuaded Ken Russell, no ...

... suspected of murdering first her father-in- law, Emperor Constantine, then her weak playboy husband. Emperor Romanos II. When she marries the noble general Phocas, who has recaptured Crete from the Arabs, you wonder how long he will last. Designed as a site-specific ...

... the West End prior to its arriving here. On the surface it seems a simple enough tale of an Edwardian Alfie who charms and marries young girls with prospects and then abandons them, but there is something so beguiling about this piece that the audience ...

... house, much transformed since the death. When the young devil starts courting Nellie, eventually asking the poor creature to marry him, her friend Jill loses all sense of rhyme and reason. What should be a brooding tale of strong but repressed female desire ...

... up to West End standards, which played seasons of up to six weeks in leading regional theatres. Along the way she met and married the actor Tony Steedman and had a daughter, but the marriage foundered and she found herself on her own with a baby to support ...

... Benedick, that is not going to happen again Northern Broadsides' staging, launched at its Viaduct Theatre base, features a married couple playing Beatrice and Benedick. Conrad Nelson, a supremely watchable actor, joins wife McAndrew for what has the makings ...

... while Sam (Whitfield) is perhaps the most grounded of the three, except for an unfortu nate tendency to fall in love with married directors. Marston Bloom, as the mostly offstage director who is carrying on with more than one of his cast provides happy ...

... ancient battle cries. Meanwhile, nifty old Nan (a beautifully observed portrayal by Sheila Reid) admits that although she married Helen's grandfather, she really loved a beautiful stranger who went away to war and never returned. More compelling, however ...

... impresses as Julie, particularly in her courtship scene with Bigelow, and Gemma Wardle is absolutely right as Carrie, the gal who marries Mr Snow. It is good to see young Michelle Connolly, the undoubted hit of Wakefield Theatre Royal's pan tomime, making an ...

... is unsettled with the arrival of a package containing the journal of his late Aunt Georgia, a former American showgirl who married into the Italian aristocracy. Rewind to a terrazza in northern Italy, where the sassy but bored Countess de Luca (an outstanding ...

... serious themes of friendship and identity with a lightness of touch. Each character is strongly differentiated. Sophie is married to a boring accountant-type who (cue much stifled laughter among the others) is revealed to be a closet contortionist. Marie ...

... Donizetti's slight, Commedia- style piece hinges on mistaken identity during carnival. Nina's military father insists she marry Ernesto, but she loves Teodoro, whose captain, Sigismondo, plans a deception to frighten off Ernesto, whom all believe a rustic ...