... The Devil Is an Ass The Pit Ben Jonson's sprawling romp gets the usual Matthew Warchus treatment here: flamboyantly staged, larger than life performances from the cast and respect for the script. The original premise of the play is good Satan sending a minion to London to cause trou ble. And there is merit in the con clusion that London is hellish enough as it is. But the problems are to be ...

... The play is the thing to blame Theatre Royal Haymarket Mind Millie for Me One leaves the theatre speculating as to why this late Feydeau farce does not catch alight in quite the same fashion as Peter Hall's recent production of An Absolute Turkey by the same author. It does not lie with the casting--both the delectable Felicity Kendal and that excellent farceur Nicholas Le Prevost were in ...

... Downtown Paradise Finborough We have had the award-winning film Dead Man Walking and now with a sort of 'wronged man ranting' Mark Jeans' new play juggles with some very old prejudices, placing the drama bang in 1970 when the children of the sixties revolution still had flowers in their hair and dizzy ideals in their heads about the world they wanted. There is peace and love but little ...

... Trifles Orange Tree Room John Wright was a tough Iowa fanner whose icy greeting could cut through you like a chill wind. Now he is dead, throttled in bed by his own rope, and his wife Minnie is being held as chief suspect. Susan Glaspells famous one act murder mystery, written in 1916 when she was reporting crime for a local newspaper, opens as the Sheriff (Gordon Reid) and the DA (Richard ...

... Maria New End A free spirit, a jewel of Krakow cafe society between the wars, her name is hardly known here. But on the basis of the poems we hear in this poignant one- woman play I am happy to accept that Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnor- zewska was the greatest Polish woman poet of the 20th Century. Underscored by Andrzej Matus- zewski's incidental music, her verses share a lyric quality with ...

... Love in Plastic Cardiff In a weird restaurant named Welsh Rarebits, a cleanliness fanatic Harold, who goes around in an astronaut's suit and bubble helmet, meets Bella, the queen of TV detergent commercials, on their first date. Communication is not the name of this game, especially when the proprietor/chef/wait er's dish of the day is curried laver bread and the wine could well have fatal ...

... The Three Sisters Harrogate This Three Sisters is the third David Mamet adaptation of a Chekhov play to be given its European premiere at Harrogate Theatre. Andrew Manley has assem bled his largest cast for some time and the designer has built a huge revolving stage, setting the action on the concourse of a rail way station, a splendidly auda cious and witty idea. Rows of clocks give the time ...

... Swamp City Birmingham In his new play, premiered at the Rep Studio, Paul Lucas seems keen to revive the concept of theatre of the absurd, or apply Douglas Adams' anarchic humour to the less galactic world of the decaying inner city. At a tumbledown hotel in the shadow of tower blocks, we meet a motley bunch of characters, all of whom are in pursuit of each other. There is Bob, the drowner, ...

... Tartutte Almeida The last Tartuffe I saw, at the Old Vic, was a highly comic affair, with John Sessions and Felicity Kendal. Jonathan Kent's production is very different, bringing out the darker side of Moliere's most fascinating play. Tom Hollander is a decidedly creepy figure in the title role, long-haired, ascetic and given to adopting the attitude of the pieta. Speaking in a crepus ...

... Bitter Lemon Orange Tree Room This gripping drama of 'divorce Spanish style, set in the seventies when Franco and the church still kept the lid on family life, is another exciting Orange Tree discovery. Jaime Salom, one of Spain's I most successful contemporary i dramatists, has more than 30 staged plays to his credit, acclaimed in translation in New York, Paris and throughout t Europe but not ...

... An Insect Aside/ Stealing Souls The Red Room Basking in the nc-doubt-deserved glory of gaining a Guinness Ingenuity award (in association with the National Theatre) for its forthcoming The Coming to Land season, the Red Room at the Lion & Unicom here presents a most curious if sporadically esting but amusingly macabre double bill. Those afraid of the mere mention of creepy crawlies should ...

... Tap Dogs Lyric Cliches like 'it took my breath away' or steal a ticket if you have to' are ten-a-penny nowadays, but I would love to repeat them and more in praise of the athletic skill of Tap Dogs. This male Australian dance troupe Dein Perry, Darren Disney, Drew Kaluski, Ben Read, Nathan Sheens, Gerry Symonds took the Edinburgh Festival and Sadler's Wells by storm last year, so it is not ...