... The Gay Detective Tricycle If the touring success of this play is to be believed, the Irish provinces are not what they used to be. It has the most explicit scenes of male sex I have seen on a public stage, but it would be a mistake to label it as purely sensational. On this evidence Gerard Stembridge is a playwright and director to be watched, for The Gay Detective manages to be funny, ...

... Happy Days Almeida Beckett's Winnie is an incurable optimist trapped under a blazing sun with no protection but a parasol. Buried up to her diddies in an arid mound of sand and later up to her neck, she finds pathetic ways to fill the time between the bells for waking and sleep. With her amis free, she can empty her bag slowly to make it last, apply a smear of lipstick or struggle to read ...

... The Tempest Ipswich/Touring A tried and successful partnership between the Wolsey and Shared Experience has brought a co-production of The Tempest to Ipswich to premiere before a tour of the UK and the Far Fast There is quite a significant Japanese influence on the pro duction, notably in shimmering white sails stretched on frames forming a portable, flexible set. Sweet sounds and strange ...

... Oh, What a Lovely War! Newcastle/Touring The total futility of war is the message that comes out strongest from Oh, What a Lovely War! and the tragic loss of millions of lives over a stalemate which lasted for four years and eventually gained little or nothing. Contrast this with the undying spirit of the English Tommy. He went to war to defend what he thought was right, to fight for his ...

... Antics never fail to please Edinburgh Cyrano de Bergerac Communicado Theatre Company's revival of its 1992 version of Cyrano hits the Royal Lyceum stage, proboscis first, with a whiff of dark tobacco, a gulp of rough red wine and a mouthful of couthy language. Here lie extravagant acting. wild forays into on-stage swordsman ship and, with Edwin Morgan's exuberant translation into Scots ...

... Rigoletto Dartford/Touring One of the problems with touring opera is gauging audiences' working knowledge of the subject which may not equal that of metropolitan buffs. English Touring Opera's 1996 Rigoletto production at the Orchard, revived by Paul Curran, fails to address that problem. Charles Edwards, whose designs helped sink Kurt Weill's Love Life (Opera North) earlier this year, ...

... Le Nozze di Figaro Glyndebourne/Touring Glyndebourne Touring Opera has revived Stephen Medcalf's production of Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, which opened the new house in the summer of 1994. It is a straightforward unfussy staging amid John Gunter's penny plain settings given a lift by bright colours, stylish costumes, discreet props and furniture library shelves, linen and wig cupboards. It ...

... The Jaggy Thistle Search for a Star Blackpool The final of any talent competition can mean a notoriously long wait for the act unfortunate enough to draw the short straw of performing first. Somewhere there is probably a thesis being written about just what the optimum place on the bill would be. Just before the interval for a vocalist when the audience is still interested and sober enough? ...

... Wild Honey Scarborough Michael Frayn's adaptation of Anton Chekhov's six-hour-long play is an enchanting and superb presentation which makes an ideal in-the-round production for the new Stephen Joseph. The intimacy of the stage is used to splendid effect in Alan Ayckboum's direction of this, the third summer production at the theatre. Frayn's well-crafted transla tion from the Russian original ...

... Write Me a Murder Eastbourne Carefully designed to suggest several rooms, a stately home, on stage at the Devonshire Park, is the setting for intrigue in Frederick Knott's famous thriller. Furnishings and colours of the fifties suggest a gloomy atmosphere of impending trouble. The mention of one title and two brothers is an obvi ous nudge, likewise, the middle- aged property tycoon and the ...

... Double Helix Dublin This play, designed by its director John Crowley and Colman Corish, was performed at the 1995 Dublin Theatre Festival to great acclaim. The Bickerstaffe Theatre Company has returned to Dublin with a slight change in cast and a large change in script to the Peacock. The image of the double helix, our genetic blueprint, is the pattern that overlays all of the action of the ...

... Giovanna D'Arco Royal Opera House Giovanna D'Arco is an illustration of the fact that market forces are nothing new in the arts. Verdi's little-known piece is on the short side, has only three principal roles and was quite obviously written for the singers who originally played them. This is not to say that it is not full of typically glorious music, brought out in a masterly fashion by the ...