... Measure for Measure Lincoln's Inn This tale of sex and corruption in high places was written for chamber performance. But in the AandBC production set on the North Lawn of Lincoln's Inn, Vanessa Earl's Isabella is among the best I have seen in any theatrical setting. as the sun sets and the fixed stage lights take over, her figure, clad in a pure white novice robe, is isolated against a ...

... Home at Seven Southwold, Suffolk RC Sherriffs Home at Seven, a study of amnesia, is the second play in the Jill Freud Company's summer season at St Edmund's Hall. Whereas the bitter banter between faithful old batman and ex-public schoolboys in the Great War trenches still seems accept able today, Sherriffs dialogue in Home at Seven sounds very stilted and Anthony Falkingham's lacklustre ...

... Breakdown in communication Hull Weekend Breaks A tale of two lifestyles could wel provide an alternative title for Johr Godber's latest play Weekend Breaks, which was officially premiered at Hull Truck Theatre, where he is artistic director. Not an onginai uieme, dui one at which Godber excels, H concerns a typical northern work ing-class couple whose sacrifices have enabled their son to gain ...

... Little Shop of Horrors Bagnor The worst you can say about this musical sci-fi spoof is that it stretches one joke about as far as it can go. But it brings a refreshingly ruthless tone to its mock-Faustian tale of a strange plant which brings prosperity to a run-down New York flower shop at the price of a diet of human flesh. Star of the Watermill produc tion is undoubtedly Audrey 2 operated by ...

... Eugene Onerin Holland Park Opera Holland Park's enjoyable production of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin offered the kind of experience older operagoers will associate with the Sadler's Wells Opera of the fifties and sixties, exemplified by straightforward storytelling, meaningful interaction between protagonists, an eye for tableaux and pleasing functional designs, all drawing inspiration from ...

... Final show of '97 ticks along nicely Barnsley Boulevard Entertainments Boulevard Entertainments staged its second and final showcase of 1997 at Barugh Green WMC. Compere for the evening was the excellent vocalist and highly accomplished Danny Andrews, who kept things ticking along nicely on a very warm evening. Andrews opened with a song, Orbison's swansong hit I Drove All Night, before ...

... Rose and Bufflehead Diverse Attractions A service far too few community theatres provide is a showcase for local writers. By producing the work of two Dundee playwrights, the Red Rag Theatre introduces audiences to modest but worthy talents with individual voices. In David Robertson's Bufflehead the wife of a punch- drunk prize fighter is reduced to tending the near-catatonic who can only ...

... Smart Women, Stupid Choices Famous Grouse House In a parody on one of those self- help therapy seminars so beloved of the Americans, Nancy Hartman presents a wee service for those women who are for ever chasing the unobtainable-- married men. bood idea, and even better if it were a real seminar and she charged 50 bucks a time. There's something alluring about that band of gold on a mans ring ...

... Alastair McGowan in Moving the Goalposts Pleasance Girl with upper-class accent sitting behind me asked ordinary bloke beside her: What does this guy do then? Ordinary bloke response: Sporting impersonations'. Com pare and contrast with drunk man who entered wearing a 1978 Scotland jersey. One person is out of place. Sexist reviewer I hear you think. But no it was the Archie Gemmill ...

... Al Murray the Pub Landlord -- King of Beers Pleasance Al Murray is possibly the most per suasive advocate of the virtues of beer drinking the world has yet seen. As he points out, beer is one of the things which distinguishes us from the animals besides reason, of course. Naturally, in Murray's pub king dom, it's just a glass of white wine for the ladies even for the Queen. This landlord ...

... Harry Younger Hall Lives Worth Living The set for this play conveys loca tion cleverly, with one or two giant jigsaw pieces of brash seaside imagery. Perhaps they also indicate a fractured mind, a personality not complete, or perhaps I'm reading Expressionism into it. Julie and Mark are on a holiday, following their mothers death. It soon becomes apparent that Mark, a gangling, balding man, ...

... The Tears of Friday Evening Pleasance As Brecht is a bit of a personal blindspot of mine, I approached this selection of his songs with some trepidation. Jan Friedl's vampish crooning of what amounts to Brecht's Greatest Hits does not, in fact, require any specialist knowledge to be both entertaining and moving, although this particular audience appeared to know the works well enough to ...