... Noises Off LEICESTER THIS production, directed by Ultz, begins confidently through quietly. By the end of the first act, not much has happened, but the audience feels it is in good hands. The second act exceeds all hopes and is riotously funny, but the play ends disappointingly. The delicate interolay of the olavers' characters and their parts fails to be maintained for three acts. They ...

... Rebecca CHELTENHAM THE GLOOMY corridors of Manderley tower high and sombre in Chris Crosswell's single setting of Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier's brooding masterpiece which is at the Everyman. Its themes of love and lost love have been explored well since its first show ing in 1940 and, here again, John Durnin's production demonstrates its timeless appeal. It is however not without a few bumps. ...

... Cuttin' a Rug DUNDEE THE lads and lasses from the carpet factory let their hair down to amusing effect at the staff dance which forms the play by John Byrne, wittily titled Cuttin' a Rug, produced at Dundee Rep by Alan Lyddiard. It is the middle pan of The Slab Boys trilogy, Paisley Patterns, and has been seen and heard before under different equally apposite titles. Set in 1957, it recalls ...

... Tale of Two Cities NORTHAMPTON NORTHAMPTON'S Royal Theatre has an outstanding pedigree when it comes to productions of Charles Dickens adaptations. Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol number amongst highly memorable productions to come from this small provincial theatre. The latest Dickens is a Tale of Two Cities adapted for the stage by David Horlock. Directed by the Royal's artis tic ...

... Prick Song for the New Leviathan OLD RED LION PLAIN Clothes Productions invited James Stock to write a new play for production at the Old Red Lion Theatre and Stock's unusual title A Prick Song for the New Leviathan mirrors the chaos of the setting in the aftermath of the 1650 revolution in England.. In the wake of the Civil War, with the king beheaded and the churches stripped of their ...

... Pericles LEICESTER PERHAPS Victorian prudishness and its hangover has something to do with the fact that Pericles is one of the least performed of Shakespeare's works. This wasn't always the case, though, and in the Bard's time it had great success at the Globe Theatre where a bit of spice always went down well. With incest, love, an ancient Greek hit-man, a shipwreck, treachery and a wife and ...

... A winning stroke BASINGSTOKE The Cat And The Canary WHO would have thought that Ian Mullins would sign off after eight seasons as Horseshoe's artistic director with a show so monumentally typical as this? John Willard's antique Gothic comedy-thriller is pure essence of Mullins: lightweight, light-hearted escapism with a good, if undemanding pedigree and sure crowd-pleasing qualities. In ...

... Cabaret YORK THE YORK Theatre Royal Company, with its first musical for four years (except for Christmas shows), has met the special demands of Cabaret with considerable success. Director Michael Winter brought in Dudley Stevens as the Emcee who runs the tawdry revels in a low night club in Berlin in about 1930, and howls his welcome to thus un ashamed market-place of sex, tearing the ...

... Up in Sweden KING'S HEAD IT IS OFTEN SAID that the weakest pan of any woman writer's created people concerns her male characters. Pam Jems, who has put before us so many rounded women, now turns her scalpel onto male flesh and minds, in a one-act play. It begins with the airy conversation of a group of Swedish boys on the brink of adult life and ends with a ritual of violence. We know that ...

... Sound Out INTERIM LITERATE OR PRIMITIVE society and that is something in which we all live one way or another is based upon communication through words. In Terry Ruane's play, the first written about deafness by a deaf person and designed to be performed as much for hearing as for deaf audiences, Gavin loses his hearing at the age of 21. The play takes us through the next six months of his ...

... Ulysses TRIPLE ACTION THEATRE THE OTHER THEATRE season, at St Luke's, Exeter, suddenly sprang into life this year, with full houses for most events. Of the groups on view only one (7:84) was in any way connected with realistic theatre. The most successful of the rest was Triple Action with Ulysses, although there were serious Haws with the production and the idea seemed way off beam. But, ...

... This Jockey Drives Late Nights STRATFORD EAST TOLSTOY'S grim rural domestic drama The Power of Darkness is translated into urban Northern Eng land lower class life by Henry Livings in 'This Jockey Drives Late Nights, the latest production at the Royal, Stratford East. It is a sorry tale in which evil is firmly wrought, hearts are unfeeling or at best harsh and sexual emotion is hurtling ...