... CEAC LAKESIDE By Julie Watterston THIRTEEN acts represented by the Southern Branch of the Central Entertainment Agents' Council appeared in the annual auction of talent at Frimley Green's prestigious Lakeside Country Club on February 21. Showcase 1990 was opened by Boulevard, a versatile, multi- talented band presented by the Looking Forward Agency. With several opportunities to illustrate ...

... Blood and Honour SYDNEY SYDNEY'S theatre scene is sometimes castigated for being intrinsically homosexual-in that the sexual preferences of its leading participants contribute to a prettiness and bloodlessness in their productions. But here at Belvoir St Theatre was a play of such unprettiness and such passion that no one could possibly wish for any less homosexuality in the theatre is this ...

... Wendy Buonaventura/Hossam Ramzy Ensemble ICA THROUGH weaving limbs, shimmying hips and come-hither eyes the solo Arabic dances of Wendy Buonaventura made clear her pact with the art of sensuality Her dances were purposeful and resolute, as if she knew the way forward as much in life as in performance, and viewed both in celebratory terms. A small, curvaceous woman, with undulating torso and ...

... Amel Benhassine-Miller ICA TO INCLUDE Amel Benhassine-Miller' programme One Day in the Medina in the ICA's season of five women choreographers. Sans Etiquette felt in the event like act of irrationality. For the season was put together to show, according to the advance publicity. passionate new work that defies cultural boundaries contrary to what Benhassine-Miller produced. Far from ...

... Leaving out the specifics FRANK GRANVILLE BARKER on a production that concentrates on the political rather than the general COLISEUM La Traviata DAVID Pountney's production of La Traviata, revived by ENO, is not so much the personal tragedy of Violetta as a documentary treatment of the exploitation of women, specifically prostitutes, by the wealthy and supposedly respectable men of the 19th ...

... Someone Like You STRAND As Petula Clark was driving through West Virginia in the seventies, the remnants of the bloody battlefields and the music she heard there made such an impression on her that she was inspired to write a musical. Someone Like You currently appearing at the Strand, is a story of the struggles that resulted at the end of the American Civil War. Brave Major Lee (Dave Willets ...

... How Steeple Sinderby Won the FA Cup MERMAID THOSE of us who follow the fortunes of non-league football teams will be more entertained by Christopher Lillicrap and Mike Fields' adaptation of J L Carr's tale than the average theatregoer, but Bill Kenwright's regime at the Mermaid has got off to a lively start with this little play. It sets itself an almost insuperable problem just how does one ...

... Some Americans Abroad NEW YORK THE AMERICANS who entertained audiences at The Pit last year, as portrayed by British actors in Richard Nelson's Some Americans Abroad, are not quite as entertaining at Lincoln Center's Mitzi Newhouse Theatre. Maybe the British satirise Americans more effectively, maybe they were just better actors, and certainly local jokes about the National Theatre, Stratford- ...

... Rambert Dance Company SADLER'S WELLS--Second Programme SOMETHING seems to have gone seriously awry with Rambert Dance's marketing policy. For of all our British companies Rambert is the one with the strongest identity--you know that you will see beautifully trained, very professional dancers in modernist and post-modernist works; you know that all may not be out and out successes, but that ...

... Government spending laws put squeeze on top theatre EAST Anglia could lose one of its largest theatres because government rules designed to stop local authority overspending have threatened to put a block on urgent repairs. The Spa Pavilion in relixstowe must have a new roof soon, say its suppor ters, or it will soon be unusable. Local authority, Suffolk Coastal dis trict council has agreed ...

... In The Ruins ROYAL COURT NICK DEAR'S new play, brought in from the Bristol Old Vic, provides a virtuoso role for Patrick Malahide as the sick George III, who ruminates for 90 minutes in 1817 in his room of confinement at Windsor Castle, diagnosed as mad by his doctors-who were wrong then as they as often are now, and who did not understand the nature of the rare disease from which he ...

... PETER HEPPLE on the emptiness of power LYRIC Vanilla VANILLA is one of those plays that looks as if it may well end up as a Hollywood film with good roles for half a dozen stars. Expertly crafted, glossily designed and with more than a few good one-liners, it is, however, ultimately empty, for all that, under the guise of a black comedy, it is endeavouring to put across an impor tant point ...