... Sisters of the Seasons Hill Street Theatre Brazil-based Cia Irmas Do Tempo's two performers offer Macbeth from the weird sisters' viewpoint, using a vocabulary of mime, movement and speech to evoke a world of witchcraft. Their mode--half-literal and half-parodic--adds little to our understanding of the play and has a jumbled effect. Speaking and chanting in pho netic English and other ...

... Kaddish Hill Street Theatre Dead Earnest Theatre's Kaddish is inspired by photographs of the vic tims of the Holocaust in Hungary and much of the power of this dark, eloquent play is provided by these haunting images. The strong ensemble cast Thomas Deakin, Sarah Holmes, Miriam Zadik, Brian Fearn and Charlotte Wheeler portray a close- knit Hungarian Jewish family threat ened by encroaching ...

... WeHo Randolph Studios A mock soap opera set in West Hollywood, 'somewhere between Melrose Place and Beverly Hills 90210', WeHo captures and paro dies most of the conventions of the genre. Its characters all young, mostly gay and all appearance- obsessed are connected by a web of blood, sexual and career relation ships that appropriately defy summation. There's a slimy villain, a bitchy ...

... herses (une lente introduction) Edinburgh International Festival: Edinburgh Festival Theatre Boris Charmatz's fourth programme in his repertoire of dances is a slow, almost movementless study in isolation and communion, played in near-darkness on a narrow, diagonal strip on the Festival Theatre stage, with the audience also onstage. Danced in silence, the first of three movements has four nude ...

... Black and Blue St Mark's Unitarian Church Murder by Sound Effects might be a more appropriate title. Four radio actors take up their scripts for three thrilling episodes of a gripping whodunnit yam. Heroes, villains, ladies in distress and bad accents abound, as do suitably appalling puns fired by every cliche from decades of cheesy radio series. What makes this romp particu larly enjoyable is ...

... Syd Garage Theatre To be called Alaska's most colourful artist may seem like a limited hon our, but nothing in this play by Eric Wallace makes Sydney Laurence seem worthy of that title. A minor and unsuccessful art student from New York, Laurence deserted his family to join the Alaska gold-rush in 1903. He found success ten years later, churning out calendar art landscapes by the dozen. The ...

... I Might Be Edgar Allan Poe Garage Theatre This production, by the Western Australian troupe Collective Uncon scious, is one of dozens of one- man shows on this year's Fringe. Its subtle intensity and scope set it apart not least thanks to a commanding central performance from David Hayward, who cc-directs with Denise Bridger. Dawson Nichols' play is a clever and involving one that makes some ...

... La Double Inconstance Garage Theatre The works of 18th century play wright Marivaux inspired the French word 'marivaudage' flirting and it's easy to see why in this romantic comedy, roughly translated as The Double Infidelity. In keeping with his admiration for commedia deM'arte. the plot is all twists and turns until the right guy gets the right girt eventually. Young peasant lovers Silvia ...

... Keep up the Barricade! It seems there is nothing to stop the Beyond the Barricade show continuing its success Though it might be regarded as an unusual show for the Paradise Room at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, Beyond the Barricade is pulling in the audiences for every one of its 20 Friday night performances. It is also doing a run of Sunday shows at the Palace, Paignton and since it began has ...

... Nina Simone Brighton Star quality is star quality, no matter how unpromising the surroundings. Brighton Centre's bam-like main hall had the look of an atmosphere-free zone, but the legendary Nina Simone brought the large crowd to its feet simply by walking on to the stage proof, as if any were needed, of the reverence with which she is regarded. Her staggering musicianship and haunting ...

... Shijima Sadler's Wells It was Hijikata Tatsumi (1928-86), the founder of Ankoku Butoh (the dance of total darkness), who likened the dance form he created to a corpse which stands upright with the energy of despair, and there is arguably no more succinct definition of the Japanese movement, which dates back to 1952. Founding his company, Sankai Juku, just over two decades later in 1975, ...

... Cinderella London Coliseum With 16 dancers off with flu, getting a cast together for Michael Corder's Cinderella must have been a logistic nightmare, but English National Ballet, to its credit, still managed to deliver a respectable enough performance. Crafted in the classical mould, Corder's writing is fluid and impetu ous, and his production epitomises little girls' dreams of ballet all ...