... Mapp and Lucia KENILWORTH THE NOVELS of E. F. Benson, which have already made a successful adaptation to both radio and television, spring up afresh in a new musical version for the stage, the creation of Peter James and Barry Jackson for the amateur Talisman Theatre in Kenil-worth. feter James adaptation smoothly conflates events and narrative from all three books to create a seamless com edy ...

... Waiting for Godot NEWCASTLE IT MAY well be, as if repeatedly forewarned in Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot, that there really is Nothing to be done to stop the sky from falling down upon us all, but until that time comes there is everything still to be said. The great paradox about this, the most enigmatic play in all of theatre, is that in saying so little it begins to mean so much. ...

... The Silver Tassie DUBLIN THE DUBLIN stage these days seems to illustrate a university course description that could read something like European Influences on Irish Theatre. First Friel's Chekhovian Aristocrats and now Sean O'Casey's The Silver Tassie at the Abbey. German expressionism was the in fluence O'Casey overlaid onto his Irish naturalism, with mixed success. His 1928 anti-war ...

... Lykos: The Danger in The Maze EYE BEING in a maze has extraordinary effects on the human mind. John Stuart Anderson's remarkable work, Lykos: The Danger in The Maze, is similarly convoluted. 1 wo young and gitted actors, Ouy Pearson and Mark Young, move the piece along gently and lovingly, lead ing the audience through corridors of puzzlement, into glades of understand ing, finally to the ...

... Johnny Strikes Up SCOTLAND MUSIC Theatre Scotland have done neither themselves, nor, one suspects, Ernst Krenek any favours by choosing his Johnny Strikes Up as their debut production. There is no doubt that there is a ready market in Scotland for small scale opera/music theatre. Scottish Opera regularly plays to packed houses, and the twice yearly seasons of the amateur operatic soci eties' ...

... Noises Off BRISTOL FEW PLAYS could be better suited to a theatre school end-of-year production than a farce about a theatre company rehearsing a farce. This is the premise of Michael Frayn's backstage laughter-spinner, and the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School tackled it with relish not to mention welcome evidence of talent at the Theatre Royal. Plainly, there are hazards for young actors ...

... Peer Gynt EXETER THE CYGNET touring operation increases in efficiency and artistic standards. Peer Gynt is a saga of a play which needs complicated staging to cover the many different scenes. Director Monica Shalls has stripped it down to the essentials and concentrated on costume changes to indicate changes in time and location. The heroic role of Peer Gynt falls to Andrew Howard, who ...

... Peer Gynt EXETER THE CYGNET touring operation increases in effiencey and artistic standards. Peer Gynt is a saga of a play which needs complicated staging to cover the many different scenes. Director Monica Shalls has stripped down the to essentials and concentrated on costume changes to indicate changes in time and location. The heroic role of Peer Gynt falls to Andrew Howard, who starts ...

... Lady Macbeth SOHOPOLY PROMISED an evening of Shakespeare presented as a 55 minute symphonic poem, followed by cattle hondo that floods the stage like a wave of hot blood, crowned by a recital of the poetry of Lorca, it was difficult for the audience not to weep when the visiting company Teatro del Viaje discovered that its Macbeth set would not fit into the tiny space available. A ...

... Pirandello's Henry IV THE BOULEVARD IT IS hard to forget, from the first buzz of fringe lights-up to the sleazy sounds of the Raymond Revuebar percolating from next door, that this is no lavish number bragging star names and big bucks. But Pirandello is no pushover. Here the inevitable complexities of tragedy hero's slide to social leper etc converge with the playwright's fixation with role ...

... Speaking For Myself EDINBURGH MAGGIE Kinloch, new director of the Byre Theatre in St Andrews, has chosen well in combining these two monologues into a thoughtful and amusing double-bill, and in Phil McCall and Alyxis Daly she has two actors who inhabit their characters as if born to them. Peter Nardini's Jimmy Hanlon is a double-sided portrait of an elderly man stuck, after an accident, with ...

... OUNDLE OPENED in 1980, the Stahl Theatre in Oundle, near Peterborough, has become synonymous with high quali ty, varied and international theatre. This is reflected in its programme to celebrate its first ten years. The celebrations commence with an international clown and mime festival which includes Trestle Theatre Com pany, Moving Picture Mime Show, German performers Habbc and Miek and ...