... Dressed to thrill PERTH HMS Pinafore Graham Fulton THE NEW season at Perth could scarcely have had a better start than with this fresh look at an old favourite. Director Richard Baron gives the show tremendous vitality and musical director John Scrimger has come up with some wonderful new arrangements of Sullivan's score. The result is an evening of unconfined joy with the original locale ...

... Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris CANAL CAFE THEATRE Lisa Martland SOME composers of musical theatre, mentioning no names, tend to put spectacle before score. So how refreshing it is to see a show where the music and lyrics come first. Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris was first seen Off Broadway in January 1968, where it had an extremely successful run and ...

... The Pitchfork Disney BUSH THE LATEST unflinching drama from Philip Ridley makes The Marat/Sade seem like a Pontins Holiday Camp. With his screenplay for The Krays, Ridley was trying to create an art movie out of a B-movie about two grisly East End gangsters. Here his obsession with degenerate twins ends in a cul dc sac. Where Pinter's ironic technique like a two-way mirror can give an ...

... Lettice and Lovage FARNHAM WHAT a blessing Peter Shaffer has been to the public at large, by letting us know just what it is that guides in stately homes are actually saying. The moonshine, or verbal garbage as it would be to Americans, is beautifully expressed in his excellent play which includes views on mod ern architecture, ham acting and the boring houses of the upper classes. Geraldine ...

... Outside In BIRMINGHAM THE SUBJECTS of Alzheimer's dis- ease, and readjustment to life outside i after a ten year prison sentence, don't i immediately sound enticing. However, grim forebodings are banished within seconds as Tom Nolan's compassionate, gritty and often very funny new play begins. Les is making his way to the outside world down echoing corridors and through innumerable clanging ...

... Anglia Artistes IPSWICH By KAREN JENSEN I ALWAYS feel confident of a showcase when I am greeted at the door and shown to my seat--Anglia Artistes certainly lived up to my expectations by providing an organised and varied evening at The Gainsborough Labour Club in Ipswich. Phil Loweii was the quirky com pere with a friendly style and zany humour. He was keen to bring on the acts and didn't ...

... Mr Gray's Entertainments WEST CLIFF-ON-SEA By JULIE WATTERSTON WHEN Colin Dench Entertainments formed a partnership with M V and C R Gray in April 1990, the enterprise opened up a number of resources which had previously not been so easily accessible. With branches in several offshoots of the leisure and entertainment industry, the new company, Mr Gray's, boasts a Banqueting Suite, Wedding ...

... Manon ROH IF EVER a role fitted like a glove it was Irek Mukhamedov's debut as Lescaut in Kenneth MacMillan 's Manon. His secret, it would seem, is to be able (like his celebrated predecessors, David Wall and Stephen Jefferies) to play with the steps and gestures until the timing of them becomes not set but like a larger than life extension of self. His air of bluster made plain his eye for ...

... The Lady or the Tiger RICHMOND MICHAEL Richmond's charming and witty musical, which he first directed here at Sam Walters' invitation in 1975, returns to the Orange Tree a year after the author's untimely death and makes an ideal choice for the festive season as a pantomime for grown-ups, though the youngsters in the audience seem equally to appreciate the subtle ties of Richmond's lyrics ...

... Wuthering Heights OXFORD THE Cameron Mackintosh initiative to set up a Professorship of Contemporary Drama at Oxford and to establish a new genre of English musicals under the Visiting Professorship of Stephen Sondheim, gathers space, with unfortunately disastrous consequences in the case of Wuthering Heights. In the short time that the ini tiative has been under way, Kit and the Widow has ...

... A Kiss On The Bottom CARDIFF THE new season of the brightly refurbished Sherman Theatre, with opened-out foyer, bars and restaurant, kicked off with a real box office winner. Artistic director Phil Clark bravely commissioned a new play from Welsh dramatist Frank Vickery for this all-important launch. Together they came up with A Kiss on the Bottom, set in a Glamorgan hospital women's ward. To ...

... The Jewel Box OPERA NORTH ONE OF the unexpected pleasures of Opera North's 1990/91 season was The Jewel Box, Paul Griffith's pasticcio which accommodates a string of terrific arias and ensemble pieces by Mozart, composed tor works he never completed or for inclusion in the works of others. Happily, it has been retained in the current season. Seeing it again deepened admiration. Griffiths ...