... Three Men in a Boat Wimbledon Studio Audience participation is not often as thorough as this. There is no question of simply turning up to watch Performance Theatre Company's superb version of the Jerome K Jerome classic- everybody in the auditorium has their part to play in the story. And the result is a riotously enjoyable show as Jay, George and Harris played by Patrick Bramwells, Benjamin ...

... Spicy action hots things up Lyric Studio, Hammersmith/Touring Balti Kings Set in an Indian restaurant in Birmingham's batti triangle, Tamasha's new play--written by Sudha Bhuchar and Shaheen Khan--cooks up a multi-cultural version of Arnold Wesker's The Kitchen, as much a celebration of Britain's new national dish (cnicKen tiKKa masaia) as it is a drama about families. Under threat from a ...

... Widowers' Houses Cottesloe/Touring This is not only George Bernard Shaw's first play, but, in a sense, one of his most important. By writing it he presaged an entire new genre of theatre, the play of ideas, and although it is a prentice piece Shaw lays out his credentials for all his subsequent work. Its trouble is that, in some respects. Shaw stuck to the then existing tradition. It starts ...

... La Valse des Adieux Almeida For the first of five performances, a largely French-speaking audience was here to see film actor Jean- Louis Trintignant make his British stage debut with a reflective verse piece by the late Louis Aragon written in 1972, two years after the death of the poet's wife. Seated at a desk and talking into a microphone, Trintignant takes us from the grief of soli tude ...

... Othello Barbican Theatre The pressures and rigidity of martial life are foregrounded in this subtle, if occasionally ponderous, RSC production. mis uyprus is an ausiere encampment located somewhere in the late 19th or early 20th centuries at the height of European imperialism. Suggestive of the hubris and discipline of the era. it creates an original slant on the politics of preferment and the ...

... Spin White Bear The road to the White House is long and winding but, according to writer Robert William Sherwood in his programme notes, the most intriguing aspect of that journey is the series of State elections, or prirnaries, held to select party candidates. As his play demonstrates, you will find more invectives exchanged between members of the same party than those holding different ...

... Turns Old Red Lion Geoff Lawson's play about lost illusions in the light entertainment industry is a skilfully neutral piece of observation about a subject that could easily have slipped into heavy-handed parody. We laugh with the characters, not at them, and are left to puzzle over their motives where a lesser play would have told us what to think. Old hands at the northern club circuit. ...

... Maiden fails to bowl you over Bush The Maiden's Prayer There is a moment towards the end of this production when, after we have witnessed a miscarriage, a failed relationship and the ravages of alcoholism, one of the characters suddenly declares: Broken romance, failed marriage it happens every day. Too true, and many fine plays have been constructed out of the rubble of broken homes. But ...

... Writer's Cramp Edinburgh John Bett has returned to John Byrne's satire of Scotland's insular artistic establishment. Having acted in the original Fringe show of 1977, Bett directs this revival at the Royal Lyceum. And the celebration of Frank S McDade's life, presented with readings and tabler by vivant is potentially as cutting as ever. Michael Mackenzie plays the Narrator, a priggish ...

... Amen Corner Tricycle There are too few plays such as James Baldwin's bold examination of emotional turmoil in a Harlem Pentecostal church for us not to forgive its length, occasional repetitiveness and some faintly simple-minded moral lessons. Artfully constructed and filled with fantastic gospel singing, it offers a gentle insight into the struggles of the impoverished community particularly ...

... Punchy look at a swinging city Young Vic Studio/Touring Soho Story Fast moving and sharply observed. Kaboodle's musical production holds the attention from start to finish, poking fun at the swinging London of the fifties and sixties but never failing to put its more serious points across. Based on The Beggar's Opera principle of low life charac ters and popular tunes, it tells the story of ...

... New twist for Japanese style Gate Ballad of Yachiyo Hawaii, 1919: Japanese immigrants, looking for work in the cane fields, turn on their American bosses. Alarmed by her boyfriend's involvement in the violent struggles, the young and beautiful Yachiyo (Inika Leigh Wright) packs her bags and makes for a nearby village to work for a Japanese potter, an artist keeping his ancient craft alive ...