... Pirandello's Henry IV THE BOULEVARD IT IS hard to forget, from the first buzz of fringe lights-up to the sleazy sounds of the Raymond Revuebar percolating from next door, that this is no lavish number bragging star names and big bucks. But Pirandello is no pushover. Here the inevitable complexities of tragedy hero's slide to social leper etc converge with the playwright's fixation with role ...

... Speaking For Myself EDINBURGH MAGGIE Kinloch, new director of the Byre Theatre in St Andrews, has chosen well in combining these two monologues into a thoughtful and amusing double-bill, and in Phil McCall and Alyxis Daly she has two actors who inhabit their characters as if born to them. Peter Nardini's Jimmy Hanlon is a double-sided portrait of an elderly man stuck, after an accident, with ...

... OUNDLE OPENED in 1980, the Stahl Theatre in Oundle, near Peterborough, has become synonymous with high quali ty, varied and international theatre. This is reflected in its programme to celebrate its first ten years. The celebrations commence with an international clown and mime festival which includes Trestle Theatre Com pany, Moving Picture Mime Show, German performers Habbc and Miek and ...

... SCARBOROUGH Absurd Person Singular THIS hilarious classic by Alan Ayck-bourn, revived for the winter season at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, ranks as one of the finest from the pen of this brilliant British playwright. First staged by the Scarborough company some 18 years ago when it had its world premiere, there is little wonder why it has retained its popular ity among all the 38 plays ...

... Misfit murders QUENTIN CLARK on a slow death LEICESTER Murders in the Rue Morgue IN THE 150 years, or so, which have passed since Edgar Allan Poe wrote his Murders in the Rue Morgue, storytelling techniques have changed and some subjects, once marvelled at have become somewhat ridiculous. For all that, though, Foe s Murders remains a classic and whatever one might think of the two amateur ...

... MAGIC--that has to be the verdict on Moving Being's latest in-the-round multi-media extravaganza at St David's Hall, Cardiff as part of the company's 20th anniversary celebrations. Jon Holliday Devised, choreographed and directed by the ever-enterprising Geoff Moore, Merlin The Magician was the fourth part of their saga drawn from the myths, legends, allegories and bardic tales of The ...

... Born Yesterday Natalie Anglesey THIS PRODUCTION of Garson Kama's award-winning play Born Yesterday at the Royal Exchange Theatre is the first British production to be sanctioned by the author for 15 years. A wise-cracking comedy of a dumb blonde who turns the tables on her keeper, it is a modern parable in which inherent good triumphs over corruption and epitomises the kind of entertain ment ...

... DUBLIN Beyond Reasonable Doubt AS A love story, this Gaiety stage production of Jeffrey Archer's Beyond Reasonable Doubt is mildly successful; as a courtroom drama, it's rather more exciting than watching paint dry. Part of the fault lies with the dramatic structure. Sir David Metcalfe (Godfrey Quig- lev) appears so blackly villainous in the first act, that even the most trusting amateur ...

... The Dispute SHEFFIELD THIS IS the British premiere of a 200-year-old examination of the emotional wellsprings that lie beneath our socialised behaviour, written by Pierre Marivaux in 1744. It is strange that it has taken this long to reach us, because in Jonathan Martin's excellent production at The Crucible it emerges as a delightful conceit, a cross between an early sitcom, an ...

... A special collection DERBY Self Portrait GWEN John died in 1939. As her celebrated brother Augustus predicted, she is now the more highly regarded artist. Flexibly melding people and places back and forward in time, Sheila Yeger tells the densely patterned story of a woman who under her unassuming surface lived, loved and worked with a self-destructive ardour. The tapestry may be intricately ...

... Amadeus CHESTER FOZ ALLAN, guest director at Chester Gateway, takes full advantage of Peter Shaffer's superb drama, Amadeus, as he and the excellent cast explore the Salieri legend. Fact or myth, did he poison the genius Mozart? Or was it the only way the mediocre composer Salieri could achieve posterity as his fake murderer? John Telfer excels, missing no aspect of Salieri, jealous, insidious ...

... Toshie DUNDEE IT'S THE women who have the real resilience in Stewart Brown's new play Toshie which makes use of Dundee's rich associations with the whaling industry of the 1880s. It's an intriguing tale wrought from Brown's encounter with the grand daughters of James 'Toshie' Mcintosh who, adrift with four companions in Arctic waters in an open whaling boat, survived an arduous voyage to ...