... Modish, but left in the dark Queen's Macbeth Each generation gets the Shakespeare it deserves, and one supposes that John Crowley's production is aimed at the Tarantino set. Jeremy Herbert's blood red rectangle awaits us on stage to let us know we are in for a violent evening. There are loose designer- ish jackets (black, naturally) for the men, no particular style for the few women, though ...

... Fairytaleheart Unicorn Exactly a year has passed since Philip Ridley was delighting London schoolkids (not to mention most critics) when he first staged his 65-minute play about the healing powers of storytelling at Hampstead Theatre. The director's baton has now passed to a two-man team Unicorn's Tony Graham and Chris Elwell, Half Moon YPT's artistic director, who first presented this revival ...

... Animal Heaven Etcetera Animal Heaven, if not exactly human hell, certainly gives the audience a rather purgatorial 65 minutes worth of viewing. It could have been a biting parody of inexplicably more-ish TV programmes like Animal Hospital and Vets in Practice, or an animal-rightsy polemic about cynical vets more interested in Porsches than Pekineses. Or even a comedy. Deliberate Theatre ...

... Rain, rain, don't go away Donmar Warehouse Three Days of Rain Richard Greenberg's play Three Days of Rain--the third and final play in the Donmar's American Imports season--was produced at the Manhattan Theater Club in 1998, but this is a writer who should surely have work presented in the West End or on Broadway in the very near future. It is New York 1995, and Walker has returned to the ...

... A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur Wimbledon Studio/Touring This is only the second London staging of Tennessee Williams' late play, written in 1975 when the glory days were long past. But he managed to turn melodramatic echoes of Streetcar and Glass Menagerie into sharp boulevard comedy, nicely caught in Jenny Sealy's production for the Graeae Theatre Company. Southern belle Dorothea, her ...

... Six Dead Queens and an Inflatable Henry! Newcastle-under-Lyme/Touring The sight of Catherine of Aragon on tea chest bass in the New Vic's studio theatre is enough to suggest that this is no straightforward history lesson. Rather it is an entertaining mixture of music and political commentary woven round a review of the lives--and deaths of King Henry's wives. The six women have returned ...

... All round Way to succeed Richmond The Way of the World The rigours of in-the-round staging are a challenging stimulus for Orange Tree productions of farce and Restoration drama. But for Congreve's masterpiece, Sam Walters takes austerity to the limits. Designer Tim Meacock offers a stark Scandinavian arena of bleached-wood flooring, metallic mirrors at balcony level and a scattering of Ikea ...

... Wuthering Heights Leeds Emily Bronte's classic tale, with its use of novelistic narrative strategies, hardly lends itself to a simplistic conversion to the stage. In a new adaptation, director Malcolm Sutherland counters the problem by offering a production with a distinct cinematic style. Robin Don's expressionistic staircase-laden designs at the West Yorkshire Playhouse are complemented by ...

... Happy End Connahs Quay/Touring Peter Rowe's second production in Clwyd Theatr Cymru's Mobile Theatre is the Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill musical thriller Happy End. A fascinating article in the programme makes it clear that another name needs crediting, that of Dorothy Lane (in reality Brecht's lover Elisabeth Haupt- mann), who wrote the book. It is due to Brecht's spoiling operation on the ...

... Blood Lines Belfast Throughout the ten years of its life. Replay Productions, Northern Ireland's excellent theatre-in-edu- cation company, has pursued a policy of extending every production beyond the schools circuit and into the public arena, where the high quality of its work may be seen and appreciated by a wider audience. Its current production at the Old Museum Arts Centre, a per ...

... Jesus Christ Superstar Manchester/Touring This stunning touring version of the award-winning musical Jesus Christ Superstar is a tribute to the inventiveness of director Gale Edwards, who was also responsible for the version which reopened the Lyceum. At last, she has been able to create the production she always wanted to do, and has brought Andrew Lloyd Webber's powerful score and Tim ...

... Diva on the Verge Peacock Julia Migenes boldly declares her indifference to critics in her one-woman show. Diva on the Verge. So she will not care what I think. She has devised it, she says, for 'operaphobes', and for those who know little or nothing about opera. Wisely, perhaps, since she peddles long outdated myths about the art. Contemporary singers are not predominantly tantrum-throwing ...