... Uncle Vanya BASINGSTOKE IT IS TIME to give Horseshoe's new director, Adrian Reynolds, his due. By his own admission a Chekhov devotee, his Vanya steers a true course between pathos and bathos in an atmosphere which fairly hums with brooding melancholy and thwarted desires This is Chekhov plain and un- fudged. The depth, thoughtfulness and complexity of Elroy Ashmore's Haymarket set is ...

... Richard Fillingham Agency By CHRIS YOUNG at BUTLINS, AYR THE RICHARD Fillingham Agency showcase at Butlin's Wonderwest World in Ayr was a hugely ambitious undertaking, but it worked, and it worked well. With 55 acts to be seen in four sessions over two days, organisation was the keynote. And Fillingham certainly proved to be a master er. 1 tie otl-peaK nouaavmaKers, ir from the cold and ...

... Talk of the Steamie GREENWICH ONE might have thought that the language barrier breached by Ian Heggies' American Bagpipes at the Royal Court earlier this year would have held fast against the even faster and quick witted Talk of the Steamie, by Tony Roper, but tumble it did. It is an excellent study of a day in the life of washtubs Nos. 5&-60 in the Carnegie Street Streamie and their occupants ...

... Caught in a trap PETER HEPPLE on a moving account of Jewish life during the horror of wartime Germany OLIVIER Ghetto THERE have been few plays in recent years as visually powerful as Ghetto, with its black and red expressionist backdrop by Bob Crowley and its ranks of sombre, poorly clad characters, relieved in a few cases by the glaring red and black swastika armbands worn by the Nazi ...

... Rees-Mogg appointed as his own successor VITAL FUNDING implications for Britain's national arts organisations have been revealed by the Government's decision to offer Sir William Rees-Mogg another two years as chairman of the Arts Council. Rees-Mogg was due to give up the post on March 31 after five years but, at the end of a year of speculation about his successor which has thrown up names ...

... The Bald Prima Donna GLASGOW GLASGOW is currently enjoying a short season of Romanian Theatre, commencing with Eugene Ionesco's Bald Prima Donna, directed by Gabor Tompa of the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj. This seen at its brilliant best, as an extraordinary spectacle set in a children's playroom with all the characters played as mari onettes or dolls, bringing out Ionesco's great sense of the ...

... The LA Plays ALMEIDA WRITTEN as a series of miniatures, this piece by Han Ong does manage to stick together as a play, fragile and sketchy as it may appear. What we see, in episodes that sometimes last no longer than two or three minutes, are vignettes of Los Angeles gay life, emphasising the loneliness of the huge and sprawling city. The fact that most of the characters are gay is almost ...

... Romeo and Juliet ROH TO ACHIEVE success in Kenneth MacMillan's ballet Romeo and Juliet, heroine (for above all it is Juliet's ballet) and hero need to balance the skills of technique and acting. But the balance can be differently applied, for not everyone will reach the emotional depths of a Seymour or the classical purity of a Sibley, and obviously different kinds of achievement make ...

... Coppelia BROMLEY PERHAPS all companies should be threatened with extinction in the way that London City Ballet was. The summer's very real threat of closure, and the issuing of redundancy notices, appears to have engendered a new spirit in the dancers. This stems, doubtless, from the example of their director, Harold King, whose refusal to give up was matched by a dogged determination to find ...

... Single Spies WORCESTER ALAN Bennett's double bill: An Englishman Abroad, and A Question of Attribution, gets a welcome revival at the Swan Theatre, in a production by Peter Rowe which finds all the dry ironies in Bennett's exploration of the subject of onage. Bennett gives a poignant twist to poetic justice in his depiction of playboy of London clubland, Guy Burgess, living an exile's life ...

... The wizardty of British blacks HAMMERSMITH The Wiz THE WIZ is one of the most celebrated shows that has never been in London. Until the other week, that is, when Peter James, who staged it at the Crucible, Sheffield four years ago, revived his production, complete with Roger Glossop's inventive and intriguing settings, which do more than anything else to convey the spirit of William F. ...

... DIANE HILL sees a powerful piece of Paris theatre PARIS Compagnie THE NOCTURNAL, verbal wanderings of an old man, alone in the dark, seem an unlikely theme on which to base a piece of riveting theatre. But when the wanderings are those of Samuel Beckett, the old man is Pierre Dux and the nocturnal darkness is the womb-like space of the Petit Point, off the Champs Elysees, the result is one ...