... Dark Lady of the Sonnets Etcetera Theatre Research into the specific identity of Shakespeare's 'Dark Lady' always strikes me as a rather tiresome activity. In irritation stakes, it runs a close second to obsessions with who split the Beatles up and Roald Dahl's purported rattiness. It begs the question does it really matter? Writer Mark Jenkins' one man show (rather admirably tackled by ...

... The Journey West Oval House Theatre Ivan Heng's journey begins silently, with mime, and then explodes into a torrent of words as everything that England means from the perspective of Singapore is unleashed in a stream of consciousness-- teddy boys, teddy bears, Oxbridge, to be or not to be It is the beginning of a virtu oso performance in which fluid movement, comic expression and ...

... Last of the Red Hot Lovers Cheltenham Neil Simon's Last of the Red Hot Lovers launches the Everyman's new spring season of plays. Kenneth Hadley, in a first class performance, takes the lead role in this brittle comedy of manners, as the decent, honest restaurateur Barney, who just wants to get his leg over. First candidate for the chop ping block is Elaine whose candid approach to love has ...

... Count Ory Brighton Judging by the Gardner Centre's audience's response, New Sussex Opera is well on course for a highly successful county tour throughout this month. Providing affordable, accessible productions, especially for new audiences, is well conceived through Rossini's masterly opera comique. With several members of this talented company drawn from Glyndeboume's ranks, this is an ...

... King Priam Opera North Over four years ago, Opera North rounded off its season with director/designer Tom Cairns' stunning staging of Sir Michael Tippett's King Priam. Now at the Coliseum, it remains a harrowing and electrifying experience. The wider stage may have lessened marginally the claustro phobia of the original but enhances the bleakness, the war ring figures (national and familial) ...

... Vanessa Gray/Navraj Sidhu, Dawn Hudson/ Johann Aebli The Place If only the work of all young choreographers was as thoughtful and incisive as that of the independent choreographers who made a one night contribution to The Place's Resolution series. For it was by sheer chance that the work of British based Vanessa Gray and Navraj Sidhu (with co-choreographer Dawn Hudson), and Swiss Johann Aebli ...

... Hamlet Wimbledon Studio Theatre Hamlet has been descnbed as a play in which a prince and ghost meet and nearly everyone ends up as mincemeat. Friction Theatre's new produc tion certainly has enough violence in it. Think early eighties Essex man meets Quentin Tarantino and you've got the basic feel to direc tor Mark Swatkins' piece. The atmosphere of the court is sprinkled with seediness. From ...

... Dreams of Clytemnestra BAC Studio Dacia Maraim's modem version of Aeschylus' Oresteia is set in the Sicilian textile quarter of northern Italian town Prato. To this end Emilio Doorgaskigh gives his Agamem non a voice like Marion Brando's Godfather. Don Corleone. after a tracheotomy. This would be fine, except that his daughter Etectra. (Felicity Finch) speaks in well modulated English. Most of ...

... Breadmakers Glasgow In John Binnie's clever adaptation of the novel by Margaret Thomson Davis, for Clyde Unity Theatre, Catriona (Man Btnnie), is the protagonist of the saga, the simple innocent married to a widower twice her age. Her husband Mervm is from the McNair family bakers somewhat of an institu tion in the working class area of Govan in Glasgow. The marriage, an attempt to free ...

... Cabaret Liverpool With gaiety masking the gathering clouds. Cabaret presented by Votcebox Company, conveys, in a fevered yet measured production at the Neptune, the political storm of prewar Germany. Director Michael Neary has many ideas of his own for this musical which can still chill with Elizabeth Stewart's rendering of Tomorrow Belongs to Me. while the Master of Ceremonies turns the head ...

... Portrait of a chilling past Birmingham The lenant Of Wildfell Hall Lisa Evans makes a skilful adaptation of Anne Bronte's novel, carving out the painful conflict at its centre--a woman struggling to cope with a dissolute, alcoholic husband--and chipping away at the verbose writing which makes the novel a demanding read. Gwenda Hughes' direction builds on this. The story within a story for mat ...

... Walking to Whiteway Cheltenham At the turn of the century a group of people sharing a dream of Utopia formed the Whiteway colony in Gloucestershire. It was an experiment in pure communism, a vision unsullied by the excesses of state socialism. Frank Hatt has written a fictional account of four individu als who walk up into the wind blown Cotswolds to realise their dream, basing his tale on the ...