... Full Moon MOLD THEATR Clwyd's pre-Christmas show production is a stage adaptation by the theatre's artistic directors Helena Kaut-Howson and John Owen of a celebrated Welsh novel by Caradog Pritchard, a noted poet and Fleet Street journalist who died in 1980. The novel has been translated into English by Philip Mitchell. Pritchard's novel is a highly indi vidualistic and intimate work within ...

... The Fall of the House of Usher QEH THIS ambitious venture by Music Theatre Wales held the Queen Elizabeth Hall spellbound. Philip Glass's chamber opera takes the Poe tale, and pares it down to a minimum. The music is a reflection of all that is typically associated with the composer; simple haunting themes, cyclical melodies, a gradual building of intensity before a cataclysmic finish, all ...

... The Sunshine Boys EDINBURGH YOU TEND to forget that Neil Simon's Sunshine Boys started life as a stage play, on Broadway in 1972, before being hijacked by a memorable film version starring Walter Matthau and George Bums. Therefore any theatre production faces an uphill struggle. being compared not only to another medium but to two excep tional performances. Essentially it's a buddy movie, ...

... Seeing is believing BELFAST The Illusion CHARABANC, started ten years ago by a small group of women eager to find a different kind of theatre and role for themselves, has long proved its credentials and now is expanding both in numbers and in format. Its latest production The Illusion a cheerfully free adaptation of L'lllusion by Comeille has been brought to the Belfast Festival by a com pany ...

... Mr Lowry BRISTOL THE WORLD premiere of John Caine's gentle but incisive portrait of the painter L S Lowry proved an inspired choice as the alternative to the knockabout world of Christmas panto at the Bristol Old Vic. Presented as a one-man show by actor Malcolm Tierney at the New Vic Studio, the 90-minute mono logue said as much about the trials, traumas and quiet triumphs of the North ...

... Happy to see a dog in the lighthouse RIVERSIDE Dogman THE WEST End panto may be long since dead but at Christmas the fringe is alive with the sound of plays for young people competing briefly with com panies like Polka and the Unicorn at the Arts who offer all year round entertainment for children of specific ages. This show, which comes with musical interludes performed by three on-stage ...

... Mr & Mrs Nobody GREENWICH THEATRE DURING the first few minutes of Mr & Airs Nobody, Carrie and Charles Pooter announce they are both writing diaries, despite their status as 'nobodies' in the Victorian society in which they live. et one of the problems with this production of Keith Waterhouse's play, devised from an intermingling of his own Mrs Pooler's Diary and Cieorge and Weedon Grossmith's ...

... Long day's journey into family business BAC Roosters/ White Biting Dog TAKING a leaf out of the book of the National Theatre which has unveiled the latest David Hare and Tony Kushner plays to the critics at the end of a day's marathon theatregoing, Loose Change (one of BAC's four resident companies) premiered these two full-length plays in the course of a gle long evening's sitting, though ...

... wasps THE PLACE CLASSICAL Greek comedy meets 20th Century rock'n'roll in this snazzy energetic show. Pulling out all the stops, Aquila Productions have turned Wasps into a rollicking slapstick with clout. Ostensibly set in ancient Greece, the comedy has been rejuvenated with a free and frank translation that provides entertaining pantomime along side more meaningful drama. Young Anticleon, an ...

... The People Show STRATFORD SO WHAT is The People Show? Examples of the human race displayed up in glass boxes for all and sundry to goggle at? Well not quite although one of the players does wind up in a glass coffin at the end of the evening. The People Show has in fact been on the go since 1 966, and claims to have performed in a bath, on a raft and even in a telephone box. However, its ...

... Gloriana OPERA NORTH BENJAMIN Britten's Gloriana is the Cinderella of his operatic output. Written to celebrate the present Queen's coronation in June, 1953, the work blends scenes of private discourse, passionate, explosive and reflective, with the pageantry of public events as it explores the liaison between Elizabeth I and the Earl of Essex. Love of country versus personal love is the ...

... The Splott Cinderella CARDIFF ANYONE who still manage to believe that opera is elitist, appealing only to culture vultures and buffs, would have had their views dramatically challenged by the latest Welsh National Opera project. Having staged Rossini's La Cenerentola for a long small-venue tour, Massenet's Cendrillon for a No 1 tour, Peter Maxwell Davies' panto Cinderella for a four-majer ...