... Doctor Faustus LANCASTER JUST months before whatever Christopher Marlowe bandwagon is planned for the 400th anniversary of his death, director Jon Pope has rather successfully cut through the confusion surrounding his most notable Play. Any staging of Doctor haustus races the joint stum bling block of spanning heaven, hell and the four corners of the earth, with how to accommodate all Seven ...

... Your Home In The West Newcastle LIVE Theatre's production of Rod Wooden's Your Home In The West was the perfect opener to celebrate the company's 20th anniversary season. This was no-holds barred theatre which looked at life at the bottom of the ladder in the West End of Newcastle. And the raw, undiluted power of the script made for a nerve- tingling performance. A spade was called a spade and ...

... Prin L FFDS PRIN, a new play by Andrew Davies, is a quite devastating study of a very strong woman principal of a teacher training college that is under threat of merger with the local polytechnic. She is a domineering woman, rules every one with a rod of iron and will not lis ten to advice or consult with her teaching staff. Finally she has to sub mit, as a result of being sacked from her ...

... Young Vic considers changes to the plot By HELEN GOULD YOUNG Vic bosses may be cast in the unexpected role of purveyors of real estate if they agree to Lambeth council proposals to build housing units on part of their south London site. The theatre is currently engaged in talks with the borough council housing department, to which own ership of the site was transferred from the disbanded GLC, ...

... Big Maggie BIRMINGHAM IRISH playwright John B Keane has created, in the name part of this tragi-comedy, a formiddable battle-axe of a woman with a whiplash tongue whom Gillian Hanna brings vividly and strikingly to life, involving the audience in a fascinating hate relationship with Maggie. Her domination of her grown up children is apalling in its often brutal totality, but funny in its ...

... No Man's Land COMEDY THEATRE HAROLD Pinter is acknowledged as one of our greatest living playwrights and with his performance in his own work No Man's Land at the Comedy Theatre, he proves that he is also a fine actor. Intimidating though it may have been for David Leveaux to direct a playwright in what will be seen as the definitive production of his work, he rises to the occasion with great ...

... Getting the point across MAUREEN PATON MAGUIRE gets to grips with the issues in Paul Sirett's new play THEATRE ROYAL STRATFORD EAST Worlds Apart THE PREMIERE of Paul Sirm's trenchant new play about racism among British immigration officials has been cunningly timed as a curtain-raiser to the second reading of the controversial Asylum Bill. The Stratford East audience responded with its usual ...

... Threesome BLACKPOOL UNDER the direction of new artistic team of Lois Weaver (from Split Britches) and James Neale-Kennerley, Gay Sweatshop has taken a decidedly transatlantic tone with its latest production. Two of the trio of newly com missioned works which comprise Threesome world premiered at Blackpool Grand Theatre are written by New Yorkers and the musical background to each of them also ...

... Bondage HEN AND CHICKENS FORGET all the hackneyed Images of the 'whore with a heart of gold', King* Cross cabbie David Hines' knocks that one on the head straight away. His play in which prostitute Liz shivers in her plastic white mac is funny, pathetic and ultimately Sad. Like the subject's clients the dialogue pulls no punches and is not for the faint hearted. The audience becomes both ...

... II Trovatore SUTTON REGENCY Opera is a rare specimen of former days opera companies which toured a large orchestra and full chorus. The modem equivalent is the very well meaning and useful opera for all style of thing with half a dozen singers doubling roles and chorus to a piano. Regency deserve the highest praise not only for the remarkable standard they have achieved but also for the ...

... Cymbeline COTTESLOE SHAKESPEARE'S virtuoso piece of story telling, with all its fantastic coinci dences and plot twists, is given a superb production here by Peter Hall and his production team. They are concerned, as in the other plays making up the late romances, to emphasise the degree of disorder present in these strange meditations on extremism, and they beautifully illustrate how the play ...

... Chess BROADWAY THE difference between Chess in the West End and Chess on Broadway is summed up by the programme covers: a stylised chessboard at the Prince Edward Theatre and a man and a woman running in front of Soviet and American flags at the Imperial. Robin Wagner's new designs abandon the hi-tech chess motit and substitute anonymous and menacing mobile towers; a new book, by Richard ...