... The Happy Haven RICHMOND THE RICHMOND Fringe Theatre's current presentation at the Orange Tree (until November 22) is a revival of John Arden's The Happy Haven, a comedy about life in an old people's home which he wrote in collaboration with Margarette D'Arcy. i iiv. i'iuuuwuuii iOJiti nun ...

... A gem of imagination RSC All's Well That Ends Well WHAT A GEM for the handsome new RSC setting at the Barbican is Trevor Nunn's production of All's Well That Ends Well, now at Stratford-upon-Avon. Here i> a masterpiece of interpretation and staging, aglow with dramatic felicities, imagination and richness of characterisation The strange, darkling, difficult work now seems plain under Nunn's ...

... The Last Elephant BUSH THE LAST Elephant, at the Bush, is a first stage effort by Stephen Davis, a television writer, in which he looks at an old culture and modern carry-ons through a blending of brisk, bright comedy and bizarre happenings. An unsuccessful anthropologist, Edward Rumsey talks and reads a lot but so far has been unable to get anything of his own published. His wife, Victoria, ...

... The Best of Radio Active EDINBURGH RADIO ACTIVE, at the King's Theatre, Edinburgh, fail in making the transition from the Festival Fringe where, according to reports, the team sparkled in last year's Festival. Their performance on the first night took place before an audience which had difficulty in filling one-third of the stalls. That audience was rapturous about the performance of four men ...

... A Criminal Suggestion FATHERHEAD PHILIP GUARD'S A Criminal Sug gestion is two for the price of one with a wordy and interesting medical discus sion wrapped up in a spine-chilling thriller. Both aspects were well received at the Thorndike, Leatherhead premiere. The basic discussion is about vivisection as a doctor/scientist researches in his Suffolk home for a diabetes cure. He sees no moral ...

... Heartbreak House MANCHESTER IT HAS taken a long time for Manchester's Royal Exchange Company to get round to a Shaw play, but on the evidence of the current production of Heartbreak House the wait has been well worth while. The oddly assorted members of the Shotover family engage in long and sometimes apparently inconsequential conversation and there is bitterness, if not tragedy, lurking ...

... An updated Restoration comedy COVENTRY She Would If She Could MICHAEL BOYD's production is full of inventive ideas, not the least being his main theme of using Etheredge's Restoration comedy to reflect back to us the sour face of our own permissive society. The aristocrats and dandies ol London in the 1680s become the trendy academics of Coventry in the 1980s, with a class structure of ...

... Plunging into Romantic period NOTTINGHAM Mary Stuart NOTTINGHAM PLAYHOUSE has plunged into the Romantic period with Srhiller'* Marv Sruart. Having to contend with the recent rerun of television's Elizabeth R, it keeps away from its Shakespearean milieu by putting it into late 18th century costume. The tough domestic plotting of Elizabeth's court thus takes on the more subtle gloss of ...

... The Caucasian Chalk Circle IPSWICH A sad, bewildered child on the Wolsey programme cover sets the scene, and Liz Gilbert's stage design completes the picture with ramshackle buildings, a hint of the 1939-45 war horrors and a bleakly forbidding mountain range behind which a blood-red sun is actually seen to slowly sink. The story of the child, torn between the loving care of his protective ...

... Kipling and his work GATE In the Eye of the Sun JOHN CLEGG's In the Eye of the Sun, first seen at Edinburgh Festival and then at the Gate, is a stirring evoca tion of Rudyard Kipling and his work. Of course, Kipling's work was always very much a part of his life, but Clegg touches on the man apart, through his autobiographical writing. As well as stir ring, the Kipling saga is strange and ...

... Teeth 'n Smiles NOTTINGHAM FOR DAVID Hare's Teeth 'n' Smiles, Nottingham Playhouse has gathered a group of actors who are experienced musicians and have been involved with rock music. As a result, the atmosphere, the attitudes and the sound are all very authentic. uirected by Penny cnerns with a gritty, halting technique, it achieves a sort of terrible emptiness beneath the shaggy hair, the ...

... A Little Night Music EXETER WITH HIS production of A Little Night Music at the Northcott Theatre Exeter, director Richard Digby Day once more reveals one of those exquisitely elegant performances which has earned the Devon theatre its reputation of theatrical style and production which can rival some of the best in London s West End. Stephen Sondheim's musical plav demands elegance and ...