... The Letter London International Mime Festival: Purcell Room/Touring Drama students will be familiar with the exercise of repeating a short scenario in a variety of styles to experiment with movement and gesture. Taking this simple premise to extreme lengths, Paolo Nani has produced a polished solo piece. Each vignette shares the same story, but they are preceeded by a sign post informing ...

... Gradiva London International Mime Festival: Purcell Room Total darkness is broken by a severe spotlight illuminating a cocooned figure with a giant, almost featureless head. The droning, monotonous, pulsating music begins and the figure starts to slowly move around the stage, attached to the lighting rig by an elasticated cord. The effect is frightening. Thus begins this exploration of the ...

... Jodie's Body King's Head Aviva jane Carlin exposes opinions as vast as her body in an extraordinary one-woman performance where she holds the stage armed with little more than her voice and a great script. Standing naked, Jodie is an artist's model who strikes a variety of poses, pausing occasionally to stretch or rest. In poking fun at the students drawing her and recounting the minutiae of ...

... Breathtaking wit and verve Bromley/Touring Gasping Get set to catch your breath as writing whiz Ben Elton takes his updated script of this satirical gem on its first ever major UK tour. And there is no better venue to begin the revival than the Churchill, where it emerges victorious. Credit for this must go to the cast of four, whose characters interact more closely than an African plain of ...

... Twelfth Night Musselburgh The fashion house of Belch, circa 1984, is the setting for Illyria in this determinedly entertaining production, directed by David Mark Thomson at the Brunton. And Edward Lipscomb's OTT costumes are highly suitable too: dwelling on the realm of clothing subtly highlights Shakespeare's serious issues of identity and love, while the era gives the comedy, both bass ...

... Dial M for Murder Perth Perth Theatre's spring season opener will certainly strike a chord with its audiences. Michael Winter's production is faithful to the fifties era, although it suffers only slightly from a bit of indecision between whether to go for laughs or build the tension. As a result, one sometimes suffers from the inclusion of the other. But that is a small gripe in what is two ...

... Henderson Management Showcase Blackpool Blackpool agent John Henderson chose an enormous hall at the Norbreck Castle hotel for his annual band showcase, enabling musicians to set up around the arena. Meet and greet artists Ed Weds and Charles Hastett were posing as Basil Fawlty and Manuel in the foyer, and proved to be excellent ice-breakers. Compere Lewis MMdleton kept the announcements ...

... Snuffhouse Dustlouse London International Mime Festival: ICA How something can be so disturbing and yet so moving is only one of the contradictions that abound in this wonderful adult puppet show by Faulty Optic. Another Hes in the way it manager to draw an audience into a world so alien that to be anything other than an observer would be to go insane. That is partly due to the fluid, natural ...

... Hie Circus Space Cabaret London International Mime Festival: Circus Space If the bendy young woman on corde lisse falls, she will break her back. If the chirpy skinhead acrobat loses concentration for a second, her spiky-haired friend could be in a neck brace for weeks. For all the expressive elegance and daring involved in pushing the human body to its limits, this show is based on fear. ...

... Never Nothing from No One Cockpit It is not often that we get the chance to see contemporary Portuguese drama in the UK. Thus this fluid adaptation, by Eduardo Barreto, of a play by Luisa Costa Gomes is to be welcomed. Watching its examination of the possible roles for women in a modem urban society, it is not hard to imagine the impact it must have made in Portugal, where women first got ...

... Fame 2000 Dartford/Touring This new touring production may have been retitled to identify the passing of a new millennium but it knowingly retains all the traits of the 1980 feature film. Not least through Adrian Rees' design, which superbly captures the dilaidated environment of the New York High School for Performing Arts. Perhaps symbolic of this era of change is the fact that the ...

... Oreste Linbury Studio, Royal Opera House This English Bach Festival production of Handel's masterwork was the first since its premiere in December 1734, one of five operas comprising his first season at John Rich's recently opened Covent Garden venue. It is a 'pasticcio', an operatic concoction which recycles previously existing music to a libretto based loosely on Euripides' Iphigeneia in ...