... Dick Whittington Edinburgh When it comes to a big panto experience with all the trimmings, then the King's Theatre comes out on top. But, while the acting and up to the minutes gags are spot on, the production does have some serious flaws. Dorothy Paul excels as a Fairy Bowbells who is never too nice to care about. She deals with a half hearted insertion into the script of getting the audience ...

... Aladdin Lewisham No matter what adults may think, there is no denying the instant bond that TV star Timmy Mallett has with children. The show's publicity sums up the approach accurately: no TV soap stars, no sporting names, but a variety-based cast seriously chas ing laughs and presenting old-fash ioned comedy and slapstick. It is a pantomime aimed squarely at the kids. Mallett as Aladdin has ...

... Yule Brighton Late-night cabaret aimed at an adult audience is likely to be risque, so it comes as a surprise that there are only a couple of four-letter words to be heard at the Komedia. I guessed it would be a drag act and I was half right. Tina C, the glamorous country and western star is the fella. Barbara Nice, the middle-aged mum with five kids from Stockport, is obviously just that. She ...

... Young Dick Whittington and His Groovy Cat Jacksons Lane This show has a somewhat early start, but a hard-working cast soon warms up the youngsters by using every known seasonal ingredient to create a quality atmosphere. Produced and directed by Brian Hewitt-Jones, here is proof that less can mean more, as the venue can not accommodate too much theatri cal trickery. Carty Romaine in the lead ...

... Cinderella Liverpool This show at the Neptune is played at full tilt, packed with excitement, full of fun, frivolity and sheer verve and bounces along from beginning to end. Sytvie Gatrill plays the ebullient Fairy Godmother, enchanting every one with her feisty good humour. Her Cher number is brilliant. The show's more sinister side comes from the Ugly Sisters, an outra geous pair of ...

... Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Scarborough If audience reaction is any gauge of things, then British Stage Productions' show is a resounding success. The audience, young and old, did their best to raise the roof off the Spa Theatre. This is not the most lavish pantomime the region has to offer, nor is it blessed with the box office pulling power of huge names. But boy does it get back to what ...

... Macbeth ALEXANDRA PALACE THERE WAS a yellow flag flying from the topmost tier of the half-size reconstruction of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre at Alexandra Palace. It didn't denote that the place was in quarantine, suffering from the plague, though from the absence of spectators it could well have been. The fluttering pennant indicated, as in Tudor times, that a play would be performed on ...

... Battersea Blues LATCHMERE BAD PLAYS on the fringe are legion. But Terry Gilbert's Battersea Blues is good, very good, because it sets out to be fast and funny and succeeds in being just that. If Hampstead is the London setting where the trendies usually live, he makes a transplant south of the river to Battersea, utilising all the current jokes from Filofaxes to Jeffrey Archer, edging in ...

... Baby Baby Kings Head Theatre Ci ub THE SCARLET Theatre Company create their productions through a process of devising and improvising upon a theme, working with the writer to build a script through rehearsal. Baby Baby is the result of a collaboration by the core company, Grainne Byme, Sophia Lovell Smith and Maggi Morrison, with the writer, Anne Caulfield, and the director Birte Pedersen. ...

... Dames At Sea Oldham GEORGE Haimsohn and Robin Miller have written a delightful pastiche of the Hollywood musical in Dames At Sea at the Oldham Coliseum and part of its success lies in the naive charm of those vintage years captured affectionately by Jim Wise's nostalgic music. The small cast of six play roles familiar to everyone who fondly remembers the traditional plot of finding a bam and ...

... Romeo And Juliet BIRMINGHAM At the first schools matinee of Birmingham Royal Ballet's 'new' Romeo and Juliet--in Kenneth MacMillan's familiar 1965 Royal Ballet version, newly designed by Paul Andrews--when Romeo (Joseph Cipolla rejected the challenge to a dual from Tybalt (Even Williams) the young audience was held in thrall. For at this performance's most forcefully dramatic moment, as ...

... The Return Of Ulysses ENO ENO's revival of its 1989 production of Monteverdi's The Return Of Ulysses is not a happy occasion. David Freeman's staging oscillates between the banal and the moving, though even the dodgier moments might have been overcome by stronger casting. David Roger's clever design makes for fluidity of narrative, areas of con current action often throwing up significant ...