... English National Ballet Triple bill COLISEUM ENGLISH National Ballet may be a company reborn under the directorship of Ivan Nagy but, to judge from the poor attendance at the Coliseum last week, it is not yet a company revitalised. New names and new works--irr a bill that included Ronald Hynd's Sanguine Fan, Vicente Nabrada's Our Waltzes and the company premiere of Anne Frank are not ...

... The Rules Of The Game Almeida Theatre PIRANDELLO'S story of an eternal triangle between a man, his spouse and her lover leads to a studied game of nonchalance by a husband reduced to the role of a gentleman caller in the life of his wife. This domestic tragedy initially disarms us with the light, iron ic touch of a drawing-room comedy of manners that masks real human anguish. Playwright David ...

... The Great Big Radio Show BUXTON QUESTFEST 92 PERFORMED in a workshop production as part of the Buxton Opera House Quest for New Musicals, The Great Big Radio Show, by Philip Glassborow provided final proof that extravagant sets and a cast of thousands are not the only makings of a musical worth applauding. Good songs and a great cast point ed to the fact that here we have a writ er/composer ...

... Fern Hill Cardiff THE minor industry that feeds on the reputation and works of Wales's most widely known poet, Dylan Thomas, continues to expand. The latest offering comes from the Cardiff-based Sherman Theatre Company. Mike Kenny's Fem Hill is the result of a six-month project undertaken by the writer, director Phil Clark, com poser Paula Gardiner, and design team headed by Jane Linz Roberts. ...

... The Baby Watford JUST as well Jon Canter's first-born full-length stage play is a complete over-the-top comedy, otherwise audiences would be in grave danger of leaving the theatre in deep mourning for modem man. The caricature characters in The Baby are all stressed pieces of driftwood and debris on the snores ot modem society, in need ot both therapy and treatment. At the centre is Helen ...

... Iphigenie en Tauride CARDIFF GLUCK may not be a major draw at the box office, and his masterpiece has little chance of making the CD charts--but what a memorably power-packed night in the theatre Welsh National Opera made of it. The French producers, Patrice Cauner and Moshe Leiser, working in Britain for the first time, eschewed the visual delights of eye-catching sets, attractive costumes, ...

... Summer madness NEWBURY Cold Comfort Farm HAVING seen Paul Doust's Edinburgh hit Lady Bracknell's Confinement, artistic director Jill Fraser commissioned him to adapt Stella Gibbons' famous work. Thoroughly ton-gue-in-cheek, his world premiere seems well suited for her little theatre and its delightful gardens (one duction set partially outside is, not sur prisingly, an annual occurrence ...

... The Patriot Game DUBLIN ANOTHER reheated Irish stew is served up in the Peacock Theatre's production of Tom Murphy's The Patriot Game. The unbroadcast 1965 television play imposes, like its big brother upstairs, a contemporary mindset on old guard Ideals. Here the concept is a bunch of actors sitting around a seedy rehearsal hall performing historic tableaux seemingly from a book called The ...

... Blood Brothers ALBERY WILLY RUSSELL'S musical--book, music and lyrics, all by Russell, has a smashing storyline, indifferent lyrics and an intriguing, irritating mix of music, so much so that I would think that with such a strongly invented vehicle on his hands, it might have been better for him to co-opt some other composer into the combine, we can't all be Sondheims or Porters, and I look ...

... I'll Be Back Before Midnight KESWICK A RARE opportunity exists at the Century, Keswick, to see Peter Colley's comedy thriller I'll Be Back Before Midnight. It is only the second time the play has been in repertory and the Century is the first to have toured with it. The play is set m the living room ot a country cottage somewhere in England. As the play begins all seems sensible and normal but ...

... 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 ...