... Serving up just desserts PAUL CHAND devours Theatre de Complicite's revenge treatment RIVERSIDE The Visit DURENMATT'S vicious and highly theatrical parable of murder and greed is given the full treatment by Theatre de Complicite in Maurice Valency's adaptation. That rather dubious word adapt means in this case a richlv energetic and comical patina. Complicity patina becomes the over lay from ...

... Byzantine Flowers SYDNEY AT LAST the epic-poetic playwright and novelist, Louis Nowra, has come up with a play that is both domestic enough and morally grey enough to take a wider audience with him into his world of good and evil, myths and guilt about Australia s treatment ot its na tive people. Unfortunately, its world premiere didn't receive the staging it deserved from the Sydney ...

... Theatre Soap CAFE UPSTAIRS TAKE a mixture of the television series Whose Line Is It Anyway, charades and Twenty Questions and you have the basic premise of Attick Theatre's Theatre Soap at the Cafe Upstairs, the Bear and Staff Pub in Charing Cross Road. Described as an audience-led impro visation, this kind of theatre is totally dependent on contributions from the audience and it is they who ...

... Me and My Friend SOHO POLY THIS IS a beautifully balanced play, interestingly enough, since it deals with people who have lost their balance in life. Gillian Plowman chooses not to include any unnecessary social or political criticism of the rights and wrongs of care in the community, but states her concerns bv showing us the weaving lives of four people who are helping themselves and each ...

... Action swoops to club's rescue By NATASHA FIELDING The news came hot on the trail of the city treasurer's winding up proceedings against the Dale End club, which specialises in live music and discos for ethnically mixed audiences. Blake said the new company had raised £500,000 in loans and all debts would be paid within six weeks. The city centre premises are owned by the council. The annual ...

... Tower revamp By ROBIN DUKE THE CONTROVERSIAL £17 million revamp of Blackpool Tower has been approved by the Department of the Environment. The decision has ended months of deadlock over the historic build ing's future and allows owners First Leisure to go ahead with plans for a radical facelift. The plans including replacing the century old live circus with a com puterised animatronics ...

... Hyatt gets US bar A £900,000 BAR extension is being constructed at Birming ham's newest and most presti gious Hyatt-Regency Hotel. The 23-storey building in Broad Street and situated opposite the £150 million International Convention Centre is preparing to open a theme pub featuring live enter tainment on a daily basis. Manager Ron Hilvert was reluctant to reveal too much about the plans at ...

... A Matter of Chance RIVERSIDE IN TERMS of percentages The Kosh's achievement in A Matter of Chance might be divided up as follows: 75 per cent brilliant; 15 per cent perplexing and 10 per cent tedious. The brilliance was in the staging, in the marshalling of a five-strong team through a scenario involving the rigours of travelling, arriving and switching back into the past. The perplexing bit ...

... It's a physical game FRANK GRANVILLE BARKER, mindful of how Aled Jones is getting his kicks these days, tackles 'acres of Italian recitative' RAM IL Matrimonio Segreto THE TROUBLE with Cimarosa's opera buffa is that its music keeps reminding us of Mozart's and Rossini's without being nearly so good. Still, it's a good-natured piece, well crafted and readily tuneful, which so pleased Leopold II ...

... The Hothouse PURCELL ROOM THE HOTHOUSE was the umbrella title given to a September weekend at the South Bank, for which performance and discussions had been organised by dancer-choreographer Sue Maclennan. Programmes were advertised as Wild andExotic Contemporary Dance. I attended the last performance, which was def initely wild but definitely not exotic. If we were to view this as ...

... Tancredi (Rossini) THE BUXTON Festival's first operatic offering this year is Rossini's Tancredi (1813), a flawed but fascinating work whose music for the two protagonists, Tancredi and Amenaide, is quite wonderful both melodically and in the way Rossini shapes its course. The finale of Act One is wise brilliantly structured to chart the shifting conflict of emotions. The opera is performed ...

... Galaxy of Welsh talent PREPARATIONS are well under way for Llandrindod Wells' tenth Victorian Festival, which takes place throughout the spa town between August 18 and 26. A galaxy of events to suit all tastes will include a carnival procession, (Caribbean Evening, bandstand con certs, Old Tyme Music Hall, puppet theatre, jugglers, lire caters, a Gilbert and Sullivan night, Viennese gala ball ...