... DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE Joan of Kent GOTHIC Revival invite vou to Chal lenge the Chunnel with Joan of Kent in Henry Lewis's musical which is based on the conflict engineered by the intended establishment of a channel rail link through Kent. Widening the Nimby argument, he chooses an ordinary housewife to be come his Joan of Kent leading the crusade against the establishment with the help of Voices ...

... The Enemy Within GATE ONE HUNDRED per cent improvisation is the name of the game in Major Brickbat's production of this submarine 'drama'-well, maybe 99 per cent. Five sailors (Peter Wear, Lee Simp son, Mandy Knight, Cuthbert Clarke and Simon Godley) find themselves stranded at the bottom of the ocean, with only 36 hours of oxygen left. Such a situation of necessity gives rise to reflection ...

... 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 ...

... Up Against It NEW YORK UP AGAINST IT, Joe Orton's abortive screenplay for the Beatles, has now become the basis of a zany, mildly misogynistic musical at Joe Papp's Public Thetre. With music and lyrics in a variety of styles by Todd Rundgren, very lively and witty choreography by Jennifer Muller. and camp direction by Ken neth Elliott, the director of the very successful Charles Busch drag ...

... Identity crisis KING'S HEAD Health Farm THE PATRONS of Elmore Hall seek redemption through trim tummies and firm thighs. But for Dora Fox (Rosemary Leach) and Jenny Nightingale (Isla Blair), two housewives struggling late in life to find their identities and assert their independence, happiness is not so easily purchased. I In Peter King s posihumously pro duced play, the Health Farm is an ...

... The Impro Musical GATE THAT this improvised show sounds as good or as bad as many a new West End musical says a lot about the latter. Presented by the aptly named Why Not? Productions, it relentlessly ransacks every cliche of the genre to produce an impeccable pastiche. The popularity of Impro as a public parlour game has already reached its apogee with Channel 4's Whose Line Is It Anyway? The ...

... Too, too light SADLER'S WELLS Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal ANY UNKNOWN foreign company appearing in Britain for the first time will be responded to partly in expectations set up by its advance publicity, and partly-- if that company goes to Sadler's Wells-- on its contribution to the art of dance. Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal seemed concerned neither with bringing its name to full life, nor ...

... Peer Gynt THE PLACE THE MOST telling moments of Kim Brandstrup's Peer Gynt are at the beginning and the end of his new production for Arc Dance Company. It is there that he sets out both an effective style and a feeling for character. In between he structures his episodes into a drama that neither engages the emotions nor establishes a distinctive dance aesthetic. It does though raise ...

... Die Meistersinger ROH LAST seen in 1983, Warner's epic comedy has been given a new staging by John Cox, with a new set design for the finale of they third act by architect Michael Hopkins. This new rendering of the prize song ceremony, with its waving flags and good folk seated in a kind of perspex stadium inept to remind us of all that with reunification imminent is the least successful ...

... Elektra ROYAL OPERA HOUSE IT WAS A great night for Hungary when the new production of Elektra burst upon Covent Garden, with Sir Georg Solti conducting Strauss' orchestrally spectacular score as ebuliently as ever and his compatriot Eva Marton singing the title-role with ferocious involvement. The production by Gotz Friedrich was set in Hans Schavernock's design of a forward-curving corrugated ...