... Losing My Marbles Jermyn Street Theatre As a young lad in Australia, Trader Faulkner remembers watching a flotilla of Diggers sailing away to win back Tobruk from Rommel's Afrika Korps. This powerful image, brilliantly recalled, comes almost as an aside in a collection of true stories of his astonishing life as actor, dancer, director and ardent lover. But 57 years later, I am happy to report ...

... David Soul in Concert Reading Twenty-odd years after I recorded on to cassette Don't Give Up on Us Baby as an eager teenager listening to the UK Top Ten, it was a strange experience to be reviewing the blond half of Starsky and Hutch at the Hexagon. What was even more surpris ing was that this hit record now pales into insignificance against some of the songs that David Soul performs during ...

... An Evening with Samuel Beckett Nick Cave's Meltdown 99: Queen Elizabeth Hall An evening is scarcely enough to encompass Billie Whitelaw's 25 years as Beckett's favourite actress and muse. But this premiere performance has coaxed her back to the London. stage, a year after her husband Robert Muller's death and a dozen more since an unhappy encounter with Albee's Martha at the Young Vic. In ...

... Tasty trio's hot melodies Pizza on the Park John Pizzarelli Trio Armed with immaculate credentials, as the son of veteran American guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli, John Pizzarelli played one of the most notable sets seen at this venue for many months. Like his dad, he is a brilliant musician, demonstrating dazzling single-string work, powerful and urgent chording, with the occasional accelerando of ...

... Faceless Diary Ahh, to be in Edinburgh. The crisp, clean air. The cold, clear tap water that you enjoy drinking. The short walks to city centre venues. The cricket and football on the Meadows, where you catch sight of a tramp defecating on the grass. Ahh. And how nostalgic to be welcomed by an old Edinburgh Evening News poster displayed at the Fringe press office entrance. It reads: Fear of ...

... Love's Labour's Lost C too Although we'll see the all-singing Kenneth Branagh film later this year, you could do a lot worse than this considerably solid adaptation. David Cottis' easy-going direction leaves the actors to ably juggle the rhymes and cheeky dialogue by Shakespeare into a very enjoyable show. It's a very simple approach to a simple story in which The King of Navarre and his three ...

... Rednex and Politics Pleasance Travelling over the wilds of back woods America, the Presidential plane unfortunately crashes and the distinguished travellers find themselves fetched up into the hands of a Redneck Survivalist sect, bent on winning power in a masterly coup and bringing the US back to clean morals and a home spun lifestyle. They are gun toting, deeply damaged by their Gulf War ...

... King Stag Pleasance This is a fairytale. Therefore fanciful frocks are in order, as are decorat ing your person with ladybirds, and radiant cheerfulness. The story, an adaptation by director Joseph P Hart of a Carlo Gozzi tale, is the stuff of myths and legends, with familiar ingredients magic spells, a sorcerer wandering about in the body of a parrot, some one playing a stag, and someone else ...

... Dorothy Fields--Rhythm of Life Hill Street Theatre The same person wrote the songs On the Sunny Side of the Street and Big Spender. The same person wrote I Can't Give You Anything But Love and Rhythm of Life. And she was a woman--the lyricist Dorothy Fields, whose career in Broadway and Hollywood spanned 50 years with collaborators from Jerome Kem to Cy Coleman, and who is all but forgotten ...

... The Rime of the Ancient Mariner C too Pounds, Dollars and Cents, a com pany based at Nottingham University, offers a minimalist stag ing of Coleridge's narrative poem in an elementary story-theatre style. The production starts promis ingly as the company of ten morph from individual sailors into the out line of the doomed ship. But inven tion flags almost immediately, and the rest is ...

... A Star Is Torn Gilded Balloon Theatre Jacqueline Pearce is the star in question and the tearing is mostly about how she should present her one-woman show in Edinburgh. As a device this works pretty well, allow ing her to address her monologue to a photograph of Rudolph Nureyev, debating that very ques tion with him. Should she, as she wants, go with the stand-up comic routine? Or should she ...

... SNAG--A Sensitive New Age Guy Gilded Balloon Theatre Nicholas Papademetriou excels in this tight little one-man show, writ ten by Tobsha Learner and directed by Sarah Carradine. The sensitive new age guy of the title is one Uoyd, an average thrusting Australian advertising executive who is forced to confront his inner manliness when his wife runs off with his twin sister. The route back from ...