... As light as a rose petal BROMLEY Giselle/Counter Balance Emma Manning Picture: Peter Mares Fragile and ethereal--JANE SANIG as Giselle, London City Ballet. ...

... Flat Spin IPSWICH A BRITISH premiere and an exciting night at the Wolsey Theatre. This is a new English version by Ray Herman of Franco Brusati's play, directed by Caroline Smith. There's nothing to go on--all we know is it's Italian. The names are kept Ricky Gagliardo is under a form of subtle siege in his flat which is the object of desire of the neigh bours, Mama Caruso, sinister Panizza ...

... Chasing the Moment SOUTHWARK PLAYHOUSE CHASING the Moment is written by and stars that master of understate ment, Jack Shepherd, detective ace in Wycliffe and the unlucky John Stalker in the controversial Shoot to Kill. Set in a grubby, bottle strewn fag covered pub basement in Peckham, a jazz band convene for that night's per formance. In between clearing up, jamming and generally shooting ...

... Cymbeline ETCETERA THEATRE CYMBELINE could be filed in the drawer marked 'plays that no one would attempt to stage if they weren't by Shakespeare.' 1 he tale of love and jealousy is so full of twists, turns and cliffhangers that it would make even the most brass necked of soap opera producers blush and is lent a surreal air through being set in and around the prosaic sound ing Milford Haven. ...

... Bloodstream BRENTFORD ANDREW Buckland's anatomical comedy, South African 'play of the year' in 1992 and a Fringe First last year in Edinburgh, follows the exploits of a couple of subversive blood corpuscles escorting a microscopic tree through the internal organs of a lumberjack on their way to his brain. Their hazardous mission is to reach the conscious mind and stop the axeman from felling ...

... Close the Coalhouse Door NEWCASTLE AFTER Live Theatre's recent renovation it is fitting that its new season should begin with the reworking of Alan Plater's classic tale of north east folk. The production and the I theatre are the perfect pairing I with both exuding that earthy I common sense and good I humour that puts them head I and shoulders above the rest. Plater's tale begins with a I ...

... Hovering BRETFORTON RICHARD Derrington's one man show at the Theatre Room creeps up on you unawares: a hospital waiting room, an anxious man pacing up and down, distracting his attention from what's going on in there by chatting to the audience. Just a new setting tor a stand-up comic's routine, you think. Indeed, the early material leans more towards the well tried than the brand new, ...

... The Merchant of Venice MUSSELBURGH THE BRUNTON Theatre company has chosen a twenties style and feel for this production. Beneath the slinky evening costumes and linen suits lie the unsophisticated mannerisms of a bedroom farce. rtione in aetraenng irom mis romp are the two Jews, Jessica and Shylock. Loma Irvine plays the former as a recreational diversion for the rich Christian merchants. Don ...

... The Canterbury Tales SHEFFIELD IT'S 14 YEARS since Peter James put the Crucible on the map as the place that could do musicals-Chicago, The Wiz, Cabaret- with every bit as much energy and verve as the West End. After spending most of those intervening years as director of the Lyric Hammersmith, he returns briefly to Sheffield with Michael Bogdanov's bawdy adaptation of Chaucer's tales. And ...

... What's Wrong with Angry? OVAL HOUSE THEATRE PATRICK Wilde deserves all the success he's so obviously due as the writer of What's Wrong with Angry? The play is quite simply a fabulous hit and is all the more remarkable as it is Wilde's playwriting debut. Dealing with a homosexual love affair between two teenagers, the play con fronts the problems of under age and therefore illegal sex between ...

... Tom Jones: A Musical Romp MID WALES TOURING THEATRE IN THE early 1730s, Henry Fielding was one of the leading playwrights in London. With a series of successful come dies and burlesques, he established himself as a brilliant and outspoken critic of the morals and manners of his day. But after the restrictions imposed by the 1 737 Licencing Act (which his own plays had partly pro voked), he ...

... The Playboy of the Western World ALMEIDA SEX and violence and men and women. Such is the potent material of J M Synge's lyrical and seductive classic The Playboy of the Western World which has been given a mesmerising revival at the Almeida Theatre. Set in 1907 in a snug, remote crossroads pub in County Mayo, amidst jugs of ale, worn benches and glowing embers, a handsome young stranger, ...