... Mystique Blackpool This latest edition of the Pleasure Beach Horseshoe Showbar annual extravaganza of magic, music, movement and mirth contains few actual surprises but then, as one of the few shows to buck last season's box office downturn, surprises are perhaps not what the Mystique audiences come to see. Put another way, if you could not work out how Richard de Vere pulled off his large ...

... Readers' Poll Awards Show Wakefield Readers of the Wakefield and District Review had been invited to nominate their Best Acts of 1998, placed in five categories. Westgate Common WMC hosted the resulting Reader's Poll Awards Show, a sell out, and it proved to be a very lively night indeed. Producer and host was The Stage's own Mark Ritchie, clear and informative, no mean vocalist in his own ...

... An Evening with Nigel Planer Swindon Twenty years on from his pioneering late-night work at the Comedy Store in London's Soho, Nigel Planer has moved his stand-up routine in an entirely new direction. as wen as oeing a iv actor and comedian, he is now an accomplished and challenging poet to date largely unpublished and a novelist with one showbiz novel, The Right Man, in print. It was these ...

... Rick Wakeman-Half a Century Shanklin, Isle of Wight Rick Wakeman recently celebrated his 50th birthday, and within three days of the party was premiering his brand new show, Half a Century. St Saviour's on the Cliff was the perfect venue in more ways than one. Now a born-again Christian, Wakeman performed many of his musical highlights in a quite remarkable show. To help celebrate, he brought ...

... A skim through famous hits Glasgow/Touring Kenny Rogers Standing with the light bouncing off that famous white goatee, Kenny Rogers is very tanned and trim for a living legend. But this old trouper gave the up-for-it Royal Concert Hall audience precious little incentive to get up and groove which is a terrible shame given the quality of his songs. Maybe it was the perfunctory way Rogers and ...