... Dancing with My Father Grace Daddy, we are told by his wife, had a difficult job dealing with 'nasty cases'. So she is not surprised that he always returned home tired, often in a foul mood and sometimes the worse for drink. But she insists that he remained a good, kind father and a thoroughly decent man. American writer and director Andrew Wood devotes the first and much longer half of his ...

... The Hunting of the Snark Museum Of Crazy Horse Theatre Company's site-specific promenade adaptation of Lewis Carroll's poem is played out over two floors of an empty Southwark warehouse. Writer/director Dylan Kitson fleshes out the work with exten sive original material, designed to give Carroll's characters recognis able personalities while retaining the absurd comic tone. So the first line ...

... Phaedra Edinburgh Translating classic texts into modern vernacular is all very well when it makes the result more accessible. But the new version of Racine's work by Scottish poet Edwin Morgan at the Royal Lyceum, is in a language whose vocabulary only scholars will comprenena ana even iney will need keen ears to catch the overblown delivery of this cast under Kenny Ireland's direction. ...

... Three Tall Women Perth This Perth Theatre co-production with Northampton's Royal Theatre is overlong, but features towering performances from Edith Mac-arthur, Susan Edmonstone and Amanda Beveridge. ii is a cieveny-cranea version of Edward Albee's work, but the lengthy Act I verbiage does not give any encouraging signs to what is a more satisfying second half. Under Richard Digby Day's ...

... Radiant with comic depth Stratford-upon-Avon Henry IV Part One In this production at the Swan, David Troughton's magnificent Henry IV is a single-minded and humourless soldier, uncomfortable with life at court, resentful of opposition and wanting only to get to the Crusades. He is so awkward and unused to intimacy that when he puts a hand on his son's shoulder, he has to hastily withdraw it ...

... How to Say Goodbye Glasgow/Touring Mary Gallagher's new play really gets under the skin of conflicting friendship in late 20th-century America. But Clyde Unity Theatre's production, performed at the Tron's Changing House space, is less than the sum of its parts a shame, as this is an intelligent script offering much in the way of insight. Casey (Lorraine McGowan), the mother who chooses to ...

... Dirty Laundry Halifax Peggy and Faith spend much of Act I of this play hanging their clothes out to dry and setting the world, or at least the neighbourhood, to rights. They lead painfully sterile lives, which are slipping away with very little happening. Sharon Holland and Alison Pennells, the piece's co-writers, seem to be telling them to seize the moment, give fate a hand and do something. ...

... Single Spies Leeds Brigit Forsyth's portrayal of HRH at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, has the audience gasping. Not just an astonishing lookalike, she is remarkably close in manner and speech, and her performance will be a major talking point. Alan Bennett's Single Spies, a double bill of the Cambridge spy plays An Englishman Abroad and A Question of Attribution, is exquisitely staged. ...

... A full-toned musical fabric London Coliseum Madam Butterfly Graham Vick's 1984 staging, revived for a tenth time by Leah Hausman, draws enthusiastic applause despite its somewhat pretentious use of silhouette and tableaux vivants. Conductor Michael Lloyd steers the ENO orchestra through a loving reading of Puccini's orchestrally Technicolor score, carefully grading dynamics and spinning a full ...

... Assured mixture of the styles Queen Elizabeth Hall Shobana Jeyasingh Those new to the work of Shobana Jeyasingh are surprised by her assured linking of the bharata natyam dance style and the audacious world of contemporary dance, as well as by the percussive rhythm of unshod feet and her unioue combination of swift, informal grouping with sensuous, angular movements. Following a ten-week ...

... Night to be proud of Longbridge Austin Social Club Annual Talent Final Despite the recent troubles within the motor trade area of Longbridge, the giant Austin Social Club was packed to the rafters for the Grand Final of their weltestab-lished annual talent show. In this age of self-contained acts, it came as a pleasant surprise to see so many of the finalists availing themselves of the ...

... The Waiting Room Cottesloe Developed through the Springboards programme for young writers, Tanika Gupta's new play is the latest in a fruitful five-year association with the National Theatre The waiting room of the title is where recently deceased housewife Priya (Shabana Azmi) must go before moving on to the afterlife proper. Understandably, she is a little reluctant and so, helped by an ...