... Celebration of genius Royal Opera House The MacMillan Inheritance With this triple bill, the Royal Ballet celebrates the genius of the late Kenneth MacMillan, although one sometimes feels the loss of his unique finishing touch. Touring Japan a quarter century ago, MacMillan was prompted to create Rituals, a three part performance piece combining Kung Fu combat, Bunraku puppetry and stylised ...

... Wyndhams Art If one turned the well known subject of Yasmina Reza's play into a metaphor and saw it as an empty canvas onto which actors can impose their own distinctive styles and personalities, it is easy to warm to this latest cast change. Well into its fifth year anc after 17 different line-ups, the producers have now choser a much older trio to discuss whether Serge (John Fortune should ...

... Wilde, discreet and shattering Cottesloe In Extremis/ De Profundis Among the play readings and a lecture which the NT has organised to mark the Wilde centenary, the only theatrical event is this double bill, starring Conn Redgrave as Oscar, linking De Profundis, Wilde's letter of recrimination and affection, with a specially commissioned cunain- raiser by Neil Bartlett. In Extremis is an ...

... Lord Beckington (90) Man in the Moon Kieron Barry's charming new play is presented as a wistful reading of extracts from his Romantic Memoirs by nonagenarian 'Lord Walter Beckington'. His lordship's autobiography, an unexpected publishing success, charts a love affair at first sight through childless marriage and Alzheimer's, until the cruel revela tion of an eternal triangle beyond the ...

... Cutting to the moral core Barbican Theatre The Duchess of Malfi In many ways, Webster's classic should have been called Bosola. Because far more than being the stock malcontent, it is he who forms the play's emotional and moral core, he who grows and develops while the eponymous heroine impresses only with her constantly virtuous fortitude and endurance of the ravages around her. So we can ...

... Convictions Belfast Festival: Crumlin Road Courthouse If one of the roles of a festival is to offer new, cutting edge experiences, high-risk productions in unusual venues- then Tinderbox Theatre Company must be due a very high quota of brownie points from the 2000 Belfast Festival at Queen's. Its chosen stage this year lies within The Crumlin Road Courthouse, known locally as The Crum. It is a ...

... Sylvia's Wedding Sonning A comedy with a bitter sweet ending that will bring a lump to many a throat, best describes Jimmie Dhinn's Sylyia's Wedding Sylvia is short, plump and definitely not the sort of girl for whom men jump overboard. Her painfully shy boyfriend of ten years standing has reached the stage of holding her hand in the cinema, and plucks up the courage to send a Valentine ...

... Changing Kevin's Story Dundee If the right sources are on tap- in this case a tradition of soul music - with inspiration turned up to white heat, it may even be possible, as local writer Chris Rattray demonstrates here, to churn out a play with lots of music in five days. Following on from his popular comedy hit set in the loos of Dundee's jute mills, Rattray has whisked his characters into ...

... Knott for the faint-hearted Northampton Wait Until Dark It has been some time since the Royal Theatre has staged a production with such spine- chilling tension and outright drama as the current production of Frederick Knott's Wait Until Dark, directed by David Grindley. From the very outset, when the theatre is plunged into total darkness, to the final curtain, the audience is kept on the edge ...

... A Family Affair Colchester Three Wishes Theatre Company demonstrated sound comic skills when they performed Alexander Ostrovsky's A Family Affair at the Mercury Theatre. Ostrovsky was considered the greatest representative of the Russian realist period of the 19th century, but even with Nick Dear's vibrant, earthy translation, his play does not travel well and lacks the sparkle of Gogol and ...

... Relatively Speaking Cambridge Ayckboum's beautifully-constructed farce of misunderstandings made his early reputation, and the details betray its age. It might have been more convincingly presented as a period piece than in the pretence that it is up to date. Apart from the baffled characters' inability to ask What the hell are you talking about?, today the initial deception would hardly ...

... Because It's There Nottingham Climbing Everest on stage proved to be the least of the difficulties implicit in telling the story of George Mallory, who died on the mountain in 1924 and whose body was discovered last year. Jonathan Holloway set himself an ambitious task in attempting to document the climber s early life and influences and to probe the mystery of whether he did reach the ...