... Poetry in motion THEATRE ROYAL, STRATFORD EAST Heer Ranjha TARA Arts is probably Britain's leading Asian theatre company with a unique cross-cultural programme aimed at a large and varied audience. Heer Ranjha is the story of a tragic love affair which was first written down, as a poem, by Varis Shah in 1759. Since then it has become an enduring tale in India and Pakistan, three film versions ...

... Lust HORNCHURCH PRIOR to the West End, the Heather Brothers' latest musical extravaganza, Lust, is a bawdy, colourful romp which may well lead its authors onto a commercial success. Freely adapted from Wycherley's Restoration comedy, The Country Wife, it tells of Homer's ability to gain access to women through a self-pro moted rumour of his recent castration. Preventing suspicion and allowing ...

... Wozzeck (Albal Berg) ENO ENO has revived production of Alban interesting 1990 that he and his Berg's Lazaridis have got it's odd that the experience moves in both senses, only Perhaps it's because they have opted for an almost exclusively urban context, even though the early scene with Andres and that of Marie's mur der both take place in the countryside. While Berg ...

... Gaslight HORNCHURCH SEAN O'Connor's production of Gaslight, at the Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch, is a combination of modem ideas and old-fashioned suspense, supposedly staged to recreate the melodrama so successively evoked in the 1943 black and white film of the same title. In this production, extravagant dra matic expressions are cast superficially under a stark spotlight causing it to verge ...

... Carmen Newcastle THE surrealist opening of Northern Stage's production of Carmen sets the tone for the rest of the evening. The setting for Stephen Jeffreys' play is the Spanish Civil War and a haunting atmosphere is created by an authentic set and a musical background created by Spanish guitar, song and the rhythmic use of drums. The tale revolves around the factional fighting towards the ...

... The Foursome BARONS COURT IN reviving Ted Whitehead's seventies play The Wire Theatre Company remind us of that French idiom 'le plus de change, le plus de le même chose'. Twenty years on the war between the sexes is still on, the blood is still being spilt on the same tleground. We've just got used to it, that's all. Which is why, particularly, this play is less shocking than when it was ...

... It's bizzy by design PRINCE EDWARD Some Like It Hot WITH Some Like It Hot, we are not so much into the realm of the musical as show business, two off-colour words for those who believe every experience should be meaningful. This show is decidedly not meaningful, the book is an adequate stage adaptation of a classic comedy film, the music, by Jule Styne, is at an altogether more humdrum ...

... An Awfully Big Adventure LIVERPOOL PLAYHOUSE. IN 1950 Beryl Bainbridge joined the Liverpool Playhouse Company as an acting ASM. What happened after that featured in her Booker-nominated novel, An Awfully Big Adventure, which she herself has adapted for the stage of the Playhouse, here directed by Ian Kellgren. The atmosphere is totally spellbind ing, the emotional intensity, the char acters ...

... Niagara CITIZENS THEATRE IN Niagara at the Glasgow Citizens Theatre Robert David MacDonald has taken on the dual task of the principal role and that of director in depicting the career of a 19th century celebrity Charles Blondin, who achieved fame and fortune by crossing the Niagara Falls on a tightrope 1,100 feet long, 160 feet above the water, and always in different modes, such as ...

... Street Scene COLISEUM AT A time when unemployment, homelessness and a recession stalk the land, and politicians mouth generalised waffle in mitigation, ENO have revived Kurt Weill's Street Scene, a masterpiece which, with compassion and humour, movingly depicts the consequences of deprivation by way of a gloss upon the darker side of the American Dream. Its impact is devas tating and ...

... Hamlet LYTTLETON FIRST seen in Rumania in 1985, theatre audiences there inevitably identified the oppressive regime of the Player King Claudius (Ion Cocieru) with the dictator Ceausescu, and immediately after the revolution Hamlet (Ion Caramitru) became vice president. The set (Dan Jitianu) and costumes (Juliana Mantoc and Niculae Ularu) are sub-Ruritanian, a blend of late 19th century ...

... Blood Wedding BLOOMSBURY AN ARRESTING production of Lorca's 1933 play, a curious mix of the lyrical, the fantastic, and the tragic- the first play in his great trilogy dealing with the passions and frustrations of the peasantry. Ably directed by Edward Wilson, this translation by Michael Dewell and Carmen Zapata captures the simplicity of the poetic language used, and the ballad elements ...