... The Overcoat Demarco Foundation Credo Theatre from Bulgaria is back with a repeat of its version of Gogol's The Overcoat which is, as before, pure delight. The performers become two shabby clowns, with outsize mous taches and eyebrows, to enact the well-known story of a poor clerk who, having died as a result of the theft of his overcoat, haunted the streets of St Petersburg, a ghostly ...

... The Dream of Puccini Quaker Meeting House Almost half of Piers Gray's 45 minute play about the last hours of Puccini has solo actor Daniel Foley silently listening to recorded bits of Puccini's music, usually with his back to the audience. And these are the play's most success ful moments. Interspersed are far less evoca tive scenes in which Foley, employ ing a burlesque stage Italian accent, ...

... It's riotous fun on a Plate-e Edinburgh International Festival Festival Theatre Platee If the Royal Opera wants to restore its troubled fortunes, it could do a lot worse than stage a string of productions as innovative, imaginative and downright fun as this one. Covent Garden's first collabora tion with Mark Morris is what might be termed a choreographic opera, in which the movement and the ...

... The Three Canadians in Ben Hur, the Epic Gilded Balloon II Over-flamboyant use of a smoke machine brought the show to an end five minutes earty. but not before this daft bunch of converted street performers had left a capac ity audience thoroughly entertained. The Three Canadians the joke is that there are four of them are similar in style to the Reduced Shakespeare Company, which used ...

... Only Just Quaker Meeting House Leaveners Theatre Company's mod em morality play, with music, is a lively, hard-hitting and totally on- target production, cleverly observing and expressing key social ills of contemporary Britain. Gulliver is a young Treasury would-be mandarin, suddenly out of a job. His mother Mildred worships Thatcherite conspicuous wealth. Julian, his father, a bankrupt ...

... The Prince of West End Avenue Assembly Rooms Kerry snale nas createa uie Muu^r tial for a minor tour de force for himself in his adaptation of Alan Isler's novel as a onfrman show. Set in the mind of 83-year-old Otto Komer, resident in a retirement home on West End Avenue. New York, the play's narrative drive comes from the old folks' machina tions over their forthcoming perfor mance of Hamlet ...

... Desires and Dreams Theatre Workshop What are your desires and your dreams? If you dream of winning the Lottery, your real desire may be no more than a nice garden or your parents' blessing on your marriage. Everyone dreams of things which are way beyond any likelihood of reality, but for some peopie the most basic of desires can seem to be impossible dreams, held beyond their reach by the rest ...

... Lillian Drummond Community Theatre American playwright Lillian Hellman is vividly portrayed by Eve Roberts in an accomplished and stylish per formance of this one-woman play by William Luce, based on Hellman's autobiographical works. In a New York hospital in January 1961, at the bedside of her beloved Dash Hammett and awaiting his death, Hellman looks back over her own life. Recollections of ...

... Every pore oozes tackiness Edinburgh International Festival Edinburgh International Conference Centre Blinded by Love If all the world's a stage, then audiences for this gloriously insane piece of Spanish theatre are doubly players on it. But worry not, your teeth and eyes will be intact, its just your taste that might be in doubt--this is a production which oozes tackiness from every pore. ...

... Lovers Diverse Attractions Feenage love in all its self-absorbed angst. Two 17-year-old Northern Irish sweethearts are about to get Tiarried due to Mag's pregnancy, rxit as they spend a sunny sum- Tier's day in 1966 revising for their sxams, tragedy and recrimination Eire in the air. Sensitive as playwright Brian criers script is, the distinctions aetween the bright but boring Jo and his ...

... Tbilisi Ballet Assembly Rooms As I left Tbilisi's performance, I overheard two elderly ladies claiming that the work should not be on at the Fringe and should instead be on at the International Festival. To my mind, this only shows the heights to which the Fringe has soared, and--in particular--the way the Assembly Rooms can gather together such a fine array of talent. Tbilisi is no ...

... Witty, non-stop social whirl Assembly Rooms Elsa Edgar Bob Kingdom's latest solo show, written by himself and Neil BartJett. is a totally engaging and highly amusing piece based on the life of celebrated fifties New York party hostess and social fixer Elsa Maxwell. Raising name-dropping to a high art, Kingdom enthrals the audi- ence with Maxwells non-stop social whirl from Manhattan to Monaco, ...