... Essential Scottish Opera Musselburgh/Touring This annual tour of highlights from Scottish Opera is an unashamedly populist treat. It provides people across Scotland with an evening of guaranteed hits. Beyond that, it allows regular patrons to savour strong and confident voices, like that of tenor Alfred Boe, up close in a relatively small space, as here at the Brunton. Cleverly directed by ...

... Peppered with frenetic action Sadler's Wells Salt Edouard Lock, choreographer of radical Canadian dance company La La La Human Steps, gave up studying literature for dance, and the switch seems more than academic. Actively resisting to embed meaning in his direction, he attempts to get as close as possible to a state of pure dance. For the nine performers this means 100 minutes of the most ...

... Versatility shines through Criterion London Studio Centre/Musical Theatre Showcase Seedtime, directed by Ian Dewar, is the performing company of third year students following the Musical Theatre Professional Option on London Studio Centre's theatre dance course. At this point in the year, the company is divided into three groups which undertake different projects a play, a TV and video ...

... Salient points among laughs Donmar Warehouse Helpless If Dusty Hughes is to be believed, Tony Blair's greatest achievement has been to antagonise both the followers of Thatcherism, presumably by appropriating many of its policies, and the quasi-revolutionaries of the sixties. Helpless is an amusing generational play which has quite a number of salient points to make in between the laughs, as ...

... Dealer's Choice Belfast Patrick Marber's award-winning play may be nearly five years old but its Northern Ireland premiere, by Prime Cut Productions, breezes into the Lyric like a breath of fresh air Not that the air is exactly fresh around its ensemble of six characters, whose existences revolve around nail-biting poker games played out in the gloomy basement of a London restaurant. Each ...

... The Rivals Basingstoke Director Alasdair Ramsay and designer Elroy Ashmore have done to Sheridan's play what many try to do to Shakespeare and fail. To inject some variation into a well tried and tested play is always a risk and to mix tradition with contemporary art is often an interesting combination. Costumes are traditional, but with a quirky addition. Each character wears the bouffant ...

... Snapshots Manchester Sibling rivalry taken to the extreme and viewed through a series of snapshots is the main theme of this new work at the Royal Exchange Theatre. Written by Fiona Padfield, it is an adult play which concerns two sisters. Catherine and Lian. They are embroiled in a confused relationship of love and hate. Jessica Lloyd and Amy Marston give fine performances as the sisters, ...

... The Flag Chelmsford/Touring Alex Ferguson's free adaptation of Robert Shaw's post-First World War novel is Northern Touring Theatre Company's spring show. As Ferguson notes, Britain had then become a vast psychiatric ward, through which the victims of Armageddon wandered raving neglected, unknown, until they died. A seven-strong cast play out the drama on Cath Young's bleak scaffolding ...

... Bath The Free State Janet Suzman's play at the Theatre Royal, in which she stars, as well as co-directing with Martin L Platt, is described as a South African response to The Cherry Orchard. It is actually a close adaptation, transposed to South Africa with inserted sequences of political discussion to illuminate the play's application to its new setting. The Ranevskys are now liberal white ...

... Taut study of sexual ethics Edinburgh Parsifal Scottish Opera has created a magnificent version of Wagner's work, the first in Scotland for 30 years. Director Silviu Purcarete has organised a stately, timeless feel to the production, but the real applause should go to music director Richard Armstrong whose conducting brings the opera to life. As the stage fades from grey to reveal the ...

... Revenge of the Story Spirits Pleasance London Jan Blake's work transforms the theatre from a place of conflict to a place of storytelling, and this series of five stories from African folklore, devised and performed by Blake herself, is a real feast. The five are framed by the larger tale of a young man who keeps the stories he hears crammed together in a bag, instead of telling them to others ...

... Original Spin New End This is the type of play I can remember seeing at Golders Green Hippodrome in the late fifties, prior to the West End, a statement sometimes made more in hope than reality. While watching it I actually found myself mentally casting it with leading players of that era. Perhaps there might still be a market for such pleasantly undemanding fare, but I fear not. ...