... LIGHT ME A LUCIFER A THEATRE company having had the enterprise to set up shop in one of Ray Cooney's theatres and to call itself Showcase Productions, it would have been nice to be able to praise also its its choice of play and the way it was staged. Such, alas, it is impossible to do of Greg Branson's Light Me A Lucifer which must be a strong candidate for the role of the worst stage ...

... RICHARD III. PART TWO DAVID POWNALL's new play Richard III Part Two, presented by Paines Plough is a little too clever and too obscure to be altogether convincing, but nevertheless is always interesting and intriguing to watch. It works on three time levels: first we meet George Orwell clutching the manu script of his novel 1984, very uncertain whether to publish it in case it is ...

... TIME'S FOOL POLITICAL thrillers are few and far between--and here's a cracking good one that some management ought to snaffle with a view to West End presentation. The play is I ime s hool by JacKy Harrison, which she wrote for the Llandovery Arts Festival in West Wales. Following last month's festival, they brought their small professional company to the Sherman Arena Theatre. Cardiff to give ...

... CANDY ROCK GOES TO AMERICA LAST YEAR. Mayday Theatre devised for children a cautionary tale about the pop music business-- how easy it is for talent to be exploited by commercial sharks and for sincerity to be milked into mere expediency. This summer a successor to that show has been touring in south-west London Candy Rock Goes to America in which the young rock group of last year ...

... News SOHO POLY Opened September 13 OPEN ANY newspaper these days and the news is enough to make your hair curl. Philip, the successful young executive in Brian Phelan's News at Soho Poly, is particularly obsessed by it, to the point where he feels personally involved in every disaster and act of violence. His walls carry sheets torn from current newspa pers, the bad news heavily ringed round ...