... The Birthday Party LYTTELTON PINTER'S first full-length play premiered in 1958 received--with one exception--a hostile press and closed within a week. Harold Hobson's enthusiastic notice could not save it then but Hobson, so often accused of barking up the wrong tree, was definitely making a loud noise about something very important indeed. In the RNT programme for Sam Men- des' revival a ...

... The Seagull DUBLIN AMONG a sea of bad ideas--the hibernization of countless plays, usually resulting in serious deformities on the scale of Peer Gynt played as The Playboy of the Western Fjord-- Thomas Kilroy's new version of Chekhov's The Seagull stands out as a shining beacon. Transposing this classic tale of a callow and crumbling aristocra cy to the west coast of 19th Cen tury Ireland ...

... The Shadow of Light BASINGSTOKE THE TRIAL of Madeleine Smith in 1857 lays the foundation for this powerful and intriguing melodrama by Lisa Evans, premiered by Proteus Theatre Company at the Central Studio, Basingstoke prior to a regional tour. The case provides the author with every conceivable angle with which to express the suppressed sexuality and questionable family values of the ...

... Golden Chains THE PLACE WHEREAS some Indian dancers are now incorporating western dance techniques and a spoken narrative, ostensibly to make Indian dance more accessible to British audiences, Nina Rajarani prefers to exploit the Indian dance form she has ingrained in her. She has updated her work by adapting it to portray a section of contemporary Asian lifestyle. Golden Chains is a ...

... Tommy Steele--What A Show! DARTFORD FOR a kid who, by the age of 11, had been on every race track in the land Tommy Steele has proved a stayer in winning the race. with his gleaming white teeth that could rival a Derby winner's, and the kind of smile to light up the Eddy- stone lighthouse, he and his equally fifty-something contemporary, Cliff Richard, head the Peter Pan club. The stage has ...

... Vasco BAGLEY'S STUDIOS ANY HOPES that the obscure French play L'Histoire de Vasco would turn out to be another satire in the tradition of Jaroslav Hasek's The Good Soldier Svejk are soon thwarted with this ponderous promenade production by the newly formed Hourglass Theatre. The story of how a peace-loving village barber is press-ganged into becoming a soldier and martyr for a meaningless ...

... The Drag Factor CARDIFF FOLLOWING the resounding success of last year's pioneering season of short lunchtime plays by Welsh writers, the Sherman Theatre Company, HTV and Penderyn Films have combined to stage another five new plays. First off was The Drag Factor by the Sherman's favourite local dramatist Frank Vickery, who has written so many of their box office hits in recent years. Surely it ...

... Balls EXETER A RUN OF new plays in the Northcott's studio the atre opened with Balls, by David Tucker. Ostensibly based around a skittles team Balls tells the human story of Sandra, who is married to a taxi driver she hardly sees, and Arthur a sexually frus trated shop manager where Sandra works. Sandra is the scorer for the local team and Arthur is in the team. The script is full of fairly ...

... It's Now or Never HORNCHURCH SEVENTEEN years after the death of the King of Rock 'n' Roll, plays about the poor boy made good from Tupelo still tend to attract audiences in their thousands. Maybe the problem with Miles Tredinnick's It's Now or Never is that Presley fans are not so interested in seeing a comedy about a 'sighting' of a lookalike in Marbella. If the play concerned itself with ...

... YORK THERE'S no doubt, John Doyle is a perfectionist, whose productions are designed to excite the senses--even before the action starts. The single set, by James Merifield, is a huge cracked mirror, framing the stage like a colossus, providing a cat walk for the players to keep up a run ning, rather exotic, clothes show. It conflicts with dialogue which is too wordy, confusing some of the ...

... SONNING The Flip Side OLD fashioned I may be, but sex is a delightful subject if one isn't treated to the mechanics. In other words, sophisticated wordplay is much more entertaining than realistic foreplay, an opinion not shared by most of today's stage and screen writers. During the fifties and sixties, actor Hugh Williams, tired of being consid ered 'unfashionable' in the theatre's pre ...

... Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love BRIGHTON WHAT an exhilarating start to 1994 for the town that was pipped at the post by Manchester. A co-operative, the Co-Active Theatre Factory launched itself with Canadian Brad Fraser's Evening Standard award winning play. 'A hard-hitting con temporary thriller,' it is more intriguingly an absorbingly intricate study of ...