... Bottle Cottle for a rainy day Battersea Park/Touring Gerry Cottle's Circus Tony Hopkins is presenting Gerry Cottle's Circus on an eight month tour. In a Big Top at Battersea Park, he had to contend with awful weather and Wandsworth council's ban on advertising posters. However, it is a wonderful show with a packed international programme. Simply outstanding was Hungarian juggler Karoly Donnert ...

... Sugar Bombz Rotherham Nottingham-based three-peice outfit Sugar Bombz took the stage in front of a very busy house at Rotherham's lovely East Dene Club and caught many a discerning ear with their renditions of covers by Tina Arena, Aswad and Toni Braxton. Sugar Bombz are a trio con sisting of two males and one female. Their image is very nineties and their vocal ability is considerable, to say ...

... Egged on by his admirers Leeds The Good Old Days with Norman Collier At the City Varieties the music hall season continued with a well- balanced bill, topped by Hull-born favourite Norman Collier, who did one long spot. Not many colliers working now, he quipped as he launched into his working men's club comedy routine, donning a huge cloth cap. A fine commit tee man, was his verdict on ...

... Total theatre has horsepower Machyplleth Equilibre The power of the Equilibre Horse Theatre spell lies in it being such a total experience. Held in a rid ing school, nestling in the rolling hills of mid-Wales, there is ancient magic in the air. And this is what the produc tion team of Carreg Dressage knows and spares no small detail achieving. Red Revolutionary flags flutter beside the track ...

... Fred Rutledge Wakefield When American-born multi-instrumenrtalist and entertainer Fred Rutledge first came to live and work in the north of England he must have been at best surprised, and at worst fairly bemused by some of the social club venues be found himself working in. Rutledge had spent five years as a cruise liner musician before taking his brave stab at clubland in Britain. He ...

... London Big Band and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Royal Festival Hall A packed house and 104 musicians on stage--the jazzmen in black shirts and white jackets and the classical players in white shirts and black suits, ladies all in black. All were taking part in marking both the centenary of the birth of George Gershwin and the passing of Benny Green, to explore the common ground between big ...

... Gargantua The Underbelly Food and the sensual pleasures are the subject of Grid Iron's latest descent into the bowels of Edinburgh. Taking Rabelais' novel, Gargantua and Pantagruel, as their starting point, director Ben Harrison and the five actors have devised a show which is a triumph of storytelling, inti mate confession and promenade per formance. They are helped by a gifted design team ...

... Mr Puntila and His Man Matti Traverse Never before has a production seen the writer serve the actors so unapologetically as here. It is usually, as it should be, the other way around, but the Right Size and Almeida, in this co-production, forget themselves and, under Kathryn Hunter's indulgent direction, a erful political comedy is reduced to a vaudeville sideshow with which to showcase the ...

... Stephen Grant, Veronica MacKenzie and Paul Foot Pleasance This triple bill of new-ish Off the Kerb acts easily fills an hour and gives the impression that it could run on longer, had time allowed. biepnen urant, me suDjeci 01 Channel 4s Edinburgh or Bust series, was first on, bursting with what has already become his trade mark hyperactivity. He really needs to slow it down by about 20 per ...

... Love! Valour! Compassion! Bedlam Theatre Terrence McNally's Pulitzer Prize comeoydrama brings 80 gay men together for a series of summer weekends. Relationships wax or wane, betrayals are suspected or enacted, and AIDS and age take their toll. But the community carries on. if not triumphantly, at least with hope and good humour. The play bears a superficial similarity to Mart Crowley's The ...

... Corporate Spirits South Bridge Resource Centre vwi pwi uu> wpii im This modem morality play, cleverly written by Dan Stewart, uses both satire and black caricature, and larger-than-life characters to expose the culture of corporate greed. The eighties see business slumping at Pizzaz Advertising Agency, and hard-nosed alcoholic Bruce forces fellow executives Dawn and Pete to reject Jerry ...

... Carmina Burana DeMarco Foundation (Parliament) Gerald Berkowitz Though advertised as a play, this is actually a dance recital by the Tuzla (Bosnia) Youth Centre. To what the programme admits is a random selection of folk and classical music, the teenaged dancers present the generic story of a man tormented by the bustie and demons of the world, finding brief respite in love. The programme ...