... The Cinnamon Veil Cochrane Presented with the chance to blend the rampages of proto-colonialism with Oriental fables, Sara Clifford has woven together an intriguing array of elements in this play, produced by Theatre Melange. Her ingenious allegory pits Vasco da Gama (Eliot Giuralarocca) against Sinbad the Sailor (Abi Gouhad) in a race around the Indian Ocean to be first to discover the ...

... Harrv and Me Croydon TV land fast, brash, self- absorbed and oblivious to reality. Ray Goodenough, the producer of The Harry Harrod Show, is the epitome of the programme he is so desperate to save. The critics hate the show, guests hate the show and even the production team hates the show. Ray (Ian Saville) will not be beaten. In a frenetic opening of bad tempers, profanity and spot on ...

... Hopeless Games Belfast Festival The vibrant dance-pictures created by the five dancers of the Russo-Geiman company Do/Fabrik are one minute lyrical, fluid, joyous and life-enhancing, the next violent, grotesque, jagged and macabre. I his was the Tirst time that the collaboration between Potsdam's Fabrik Theatre and the Do-Theatre from St Petersburg had come to Northern Ireland, but the ...

... Waiting for Godot Colchester A curved grey screen snakes its way at mid-height across the back wall of the Mercury stage, creating a false horizon on to which can be projected a moon and clouds. Trie bare minimalism of the set emphasises this stage's already echoing acoustic and heightens the significance or any thing on it a child's red scooter, Lucky's hat, all four bodies flat out. ...

... Accomplices Sheffield Can people still stand up for what they believe to be right or should they hide behind their net curtains and hope that the horrors on the street never invade their living room. Doreen the outstanding Anna Keaveney giving a powerful and moving performance tried to do the former and has paid for it ever since with her home constantly attacked and her family assaulted. ...

... The Lodger Lancaster Jack the Ripper's victims numbered far fewer than seen in the opening few minutes of most modem slasher movies five in total, slaughtered over a period of less than four months in 1888. Yet more than a century later he remains the most chronicled of senal killers in history. Marie Belloc Lowndes' best- selling 1913 novel on the subject inspired a Hitchcock movie but is ...

... 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. ...

... My Business is to Love Barbican Hail In this extraordinary compilation about America's enigmatic lyric poet Emily Dickinson, Claire Bloom read her poetry, Renee Fleming sang American composers' adaptations, and the two of them half-read, half-acted William Luce's deft narrative of her life, based on her letters and poems. A figure of Dickinson emerges, glintingly intelligent, her ...

... Small Talk Brockley Jack Writer Dale Reynolds' play is a sometimes engaging, but more often tiresome, attempt to refract the state we are in today in a darkly comic light. Nine disparate characters sit in a pub chatting and bickering. Their random talk reveals a distorted version of the present in which big business, or busy ness as it is known, controls and shapes the world while society ...

... The Angel's Share Dundee/Touring There are two routes into Chris Dolan's new play, produced by Borderline Theatre and here seen at Dundee Rep. On one level, it is about the point of impact at which market-driven forces and modem technology lock horns with dusty traditions in that most hallowed of spots, the whisky distillery. The angel's share is a poetic term for the whisky that is lost ...

... Mistress of the Inn Perth/Touring This production of Carlo Goldoni's period piece will tour the Perthshire community after its run at Perth Theatre. Director Michael Winter has obviously had this in mind, as it will work better in smaller venues. As a big house production, it is very much a non-event. Peter Watson's new version is plain almost to the point of banality and there is a certain ...