... Totally Foxed HORNCHURCH AS MADCAP farces go, Justin Greene and Steve Cooke's Totally Foxed-- currently appearing at the Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch-- has all the zany ingredients of a quick-fire comedy: dubious characters, an improbable plot and even a case of mistaken identity. Where it succeeds is in its use ot new technology as the focus of the story line. The Corman Corporation are ...

... Cabaret CHESTER FOR HIS first Autumn Season at Chester Gateway, artistic director Peter Rowe pulls no punches with his splendid, bold production of the hit musical Cabaret, the book by Joe Masteroff based on the play I Am A Camera. Running in repertoire, from October 5 to 27. with C P Taylor's Good, the two productions sharing the same background of nightmare of the German Hurd Reich in ...

... Pack of Lies COVENTRY HUGH Whitmore's play offers a riveting evening's theatre in this production by John Durnin for the Belgrade. The atmosphere of quiet, suburban living is established immediately, helped by the authenticity of Adrian Rees' set: the ground floor of tmodest, outer-London house, its stained-glass window-lights casting patches of faint colour on the neutral cream walls, its ...

... Vanessa SWANSEA IN VIEW of recent controversy regarding the use of Welsh-language actors and actresses, it seems appropriate that Vanessa, which toured earlier in the winter in Welsh, has been requested of the same company in English. Theatr Gorllewin Morgannwag (West Glamorgan Theatre) scored a I huge success with its production ot Vanessa drws Nesa and the company has been rightly described ...

... Richard III HULL PRODUCING Shakespeare on a shoestring throws up a host of practical challenges which often end up dominating the style of the piece. Such is the case with Great Eastern Stage's Richard III, which differs from others largely by virtue of having a cast of just six, all of whom are men. The switching of roles does tend to make one nobleman very much like another and few real ...

... Safe In Our Hands LEEDS THE LATEST production at the Quarry Theatre of the West Yorkshire Playhouse is the world premiere of a new play. Safe In Our Hands by Andy de la Tour, better known as a stand-up comic entertainer. In it he attacks the running down of the National Health Service by the present government, but does it in a most nnarious manner that raises gales of laughter from the ...

... Of Mice and Men BIRMINGHAM ANTHONY Clark's production of John Steinbeck's play (adapted from his novel in 1937) has a sustained power and tension which keeps you on the edge of your seat and finally drops you into almost unbearable sadness tor failed hopes and dreams. The theme of loneliness is set im mediately as a roadside boarding flies away to reveal a wide-open, burnished landscape on ...

... Eurydice CHICHESTER THE original myth of Orpheus and his love affair with Eurydice served Anouilh well in his version of the play which was first produced in England as Point of Departure almost 50 years ago. The latest production at the Chichester Festival Theatre Minerva Studio Theatre under the title Eury-- dice, in a translation by Peter Meyer, is a very direct and well developed ...

... Prick Song for the New Leviathan OLD RED LION PLAIN Clothes Productions invited James Stock to write a new play for production at the Old Red Lion Theatre and Stock's unusual title A Prick Song for the New Leviathan mirrors the chaos of the setting in the aftermath of the 1650 revolution in England.. In the wake of the Civil War, with the king beheaded and the churches stripped of their ...

... Pericles LEICESTER PERHAPS Victorian prudishness and its hangover has something to do with the fact that Pericles is one of the least performed of Shakespeare's works. This wasn't always the case, though, and in the Bard's time it had great success at the Globe Theatre where a bit of spice always went down well. With incest, love, an ancient Greek hit-man, a shipwreck, treachery and a wife and ...

... A winning stroke BASINGSTOKE The Cat And The Canary WHO would have thought that Ian Mullins would sign off after eight seasons as Horseshoe's artistic director with a show so monumentally typical as this? John Willard's antique Gothic comedy-thriller is pure essence of Mullins: lightweight, light-hearted escapism with a good, if undemanding pedigree and sure crowd-pleasing qualities. In ...

... The Revenge of the Lambton Worm NEWCASTLE THE REVENGE of the Lambton Worm, continuing the story begun in last year's highly successful Newcastle Playhouse show, and fronted again by the same company of local celebrities--foremost among them being poet 'Little' Billy Fane and commercial radio DJ, Alan 'Flashing Blade' Robson--is cheap, cheerful, boisterous stuff which relies more on the ...