... Gaiety Whirl 2000 Ayr This year's resident summer show at the Gaiety Theatre has a reduced season and features only six performers. However, the production has much to commend it. Its extrava gance is probably the onstage musical ensemble which provides accompaniment, the splendid seven-piece Irvin Duguid Big Band with Irvin Duguid as musical director and on keyboards, Ed McFartane on bass, ...

... Hale and Pace Blackpool There is a double irony that after 20 years together Hale and Pace are performing their first ever summer season- and that as far as a lot of their North Pier audiences are concerned they are still new boys. Although their roots are in live performances it is from televi sion they are better known. But on stage they are as classy and classic a double act as you will see ...

... La Boheme Glyndebourne/Touring Glyndebourne Touring Opera launches its season with a new production by David McVicar of Puccini's classic of young people dealing with love, life and death in 19th century Paris. But McVicar's staging is of today and for today, with the setting transferred relatively pain lessly to London 2000. The Cafe Momus in Michael Vale's street wise designs might be in Old ...

... Jet Harris and Mike Berry Isle of Wight/Touring There was a full house at the Medina Theatre, Newport, for the first local stage performance of bass guitarist Jet Harris following his move to the island. At the end of his pulsating set he received a standing ovation. Thirty years on from the Shadows, Hams' bass guitar magic is still very evident, particu larly on hits like Diamonds, Scarlett ...

... Combination hits right note Nanci Griffith Royal Albert Hall Singer/songwriter Nanci Griffith and the London Symphony Orchestra made an intriguing and successful combination as the country star performed a varied concert including some of her best-known numbers. Conductor Andrew Pryce Jackman and Griffith worked together to transform guitartesed arrangements into the symphonic I songs recorded ...

... Nuit des Hommes Almeida An air raid siren wail which rises and falls, varies in intensity, takes on the quaver of a musical saw, prefaces the entry of young Wilhelm and Alice wearing head mics. As chorus they top and tail their odyssey. A last supper, durine which he vearns for her body, presages their eager entry into the arena of war. He becomes soldier, she war corre spondent and Kali. ...

... The Snow Maiden Royal Opera House Any chance to penetrate further into Rimsky-Korsakov's magical operatic universe is always an excitement. The Kirov gave a single concert performance of this, his third opera. Bom with an icy heart incapable of love, the Snow Maiden, daughter of Father Frost (sung at the premiere by Stravinsky's father, Fyodor) and Beautiful Spring, has intimations left among ...

... I'Amico Fritz Holland Park Theatre After the tremendous success of Cavalleria Rusticana (1890), Mascagni next sought a simple libretto, with a flimsy plot, so the opera could be judged on the music alone. The result is an opera with a story that is simplicity itself. When wealthy Alsace landowner Fritz Kobus declares he will never marry, his friend Rabbi David wages he will. Fritz ...

... Encores for French legend Barbican Hall Juliette Greco France's great icon Juliette Greco walked on stage still pale as snow, a fairy tale queen clad in black velvet with shiny black hair and her famous fringe. Accompanied by Brel's musical collaborator and her husband Gerard Jouannest on piano, with a quartet including Sergio Tomassi on accordion, Greco whispered, hissed, shouted and moaned ...

... Achtung Kabarett! New End Chanteuse Alexandra Valavelska has done her homework in creating an authentic aural slice of the volatile twenties. Subtitled Berlin and Paris of the Twenties, Criss Cross Production's show tells via song and narrative the tale of Lola, a precocious Jewish lass who escapes her small-town shtetl for the cabaret bars of the big city. A classic crop of songwriters ...

... Tough fight to make progress By John Martland It seemed rather appropriate that actress Frances Barber should talk about her work on Shiner, the forthcoming Michael Caine film dealing with the nasty side of the fight game, in five five-minute slots rather than one continuous programme. Each day in Work In Progress (BBC Bristol for R3, from Monday, May 8), she vividly recalled what it was ...

... Pride of the Clyde Glasgow Johnny Beattie seems to be an old friend of every member of this show's audience--and it is mutual. The crowd knows the jokes and the songs, but Beattie trusts them not to shout out the punchlines. From the traditional accor dion of Ian Muir to Russel Lane's fabulous Calum Kennedy pastiche, there is something for everyone. But, like Scotland itself, it has its ...