... participation. Hero and heroine have the least to do, though a blue-painted Gerald Kyd as Rama and Ayesha Dharker as Sita speak and act with grace, gravitas and often impish humour. It is the monkey army which steals the show. The auditorium resembled ...

... dove represents hope. In pre-1989 Bulgaria, people had basic material necessities, but no political freedom. Now they can speak out, how free are they if they do not have much money? But because we do not care about the unconvincing prota gonists, the ...

... deeply ingrained occurrences as the Highland Clearances the com pany does much to bring it to coherent life for a non-Gaelic speaking audience. Salvage, with four characters marooned on a remote shore, is a far more modem affair, utilising the English idioms ...

... comedian Matt Lucas) adlibbing to the audience, strains to be as contemporary and relevant as possible. But making the Trojans speak with Irish accents and the Greeks with English accents invites confusing comparisons. The central love affair is over shadowed ...

... from the two actors, John Kani and Winston Ntshona, and they seem to feel real pain as they groan with exertion. When they do speak, at the end of their day's stint, they are breathless and exhausted. But gradually their spirit returns as they discuss the ...

... Kossoko makes Andromache a woman who knows she has nothing but the moral high ground and thus, paradoxically, has the freedom to speak the truth fearlessly. Mala Ghedia lets us see the despera tion and insecurity beneath the wife's rage, so that her later breakdown ...

... believable as Lovage a tour de force for the two actresses. Director Gwyneth Powell high lights the comedy, but lets the play speak for itself. Allen Saddler THEATRE REVIEW ...

... rid herself of treachery while trying to protect the love of her life, the Earl of Essex. Given that one of the characters speaks an inspired gibberish which mixes a Stanley Unwin style of Esperanto with mad, modem Spoonerisms, one has to doff one's cap ...

... form comically expires, an editor opens his mouth to roar like a lion, a mad policeman wields a gun, and reverberating voices speak in bizarre chorus. Young Self, scribbling in the notebook hung permanently round his neck, rails against God and the world ...

... a merry-goround. Contrary to the traditional claptrap that Americans cannot do Shakespeare, the company's American actors speak with suppleness and a lightness of touch. Danny Camiel's Banquo is querulous and questioning, although his porter's speech ...

... taken at face value this is a Hellerian world where naked ambition and misin formation rules, a world whose dictum could be 'speak first, think later'. It is a captivating spectacle, not just because the suspense is maintained until the end. Sherwood writes ...

... strip her broad-shoul dered photographer. It is the punchiest musical number in a production where most actors are happy to speak the lyrics, or in the case of Hart, purr them like a sleek black cat that sold its soul for clotted cream. Still, Derwent Watson ...