... This Rough Magic Brighton Firestarters had resisted the temptation to deluge Brighton with advertising to promote their unique production, trusting instead to the word of mouth publicity inevitably generated when you tow an enormous drilling platform on to the beach. It was big, it was ugly, and it was impossible to ignore for the entire week it stood there prior to the performance. Promising ...

... Outside Edge Sonning The sound of bat on ball, the humming of bees on a lazy summer afternoon and the village cricket team are in action. Or they will be if Roger the captain, played by Robin Parkinson, can rally his team in time. Surely nothing could disturb the peace of this idyllic scene but it can and does in Richard Harris' hit comedy at the Mill, which became a popular television ...

... Rake makes fine progress Chichester Pal Joey Pal Joey was one of the last musicals Richard Rodgers wrote in partnership with Lorenz Hart and was unusual in that it threw out completely the stock boy meets girt situation, concentrating instead on the specific character of Joey Evans, an amoral boaster and liar who has talked his way into showbusiness and the beds of practically every woman ...

... Tear From a Glass Eye Gate Matt Cameron's play, co-produced with the National Theatre Studio, raises the very elemental question of why bad things happen. What causes terrible accidents, and why do people commit unthinkably evil acts? An airplane accident investi gator inexplicably bums his lover horribly. When he miraculously escapes an air crash himself, he, his lover and his parents are ...

... Terracotta Hampstead Theatre A co-production with Birmingham Rep, Jess Walters' new 90- minute play lifts the lid on fretful teenager Nicola's attempts to break free of her dysfunctional sarf London family. Because her new flat needs a lick of paint, her bully-boy Dad enlists daft cousin Ian to lend a helping hand. But the last time Nicola and Ian met it was as sexually playful infants and ...

... Romeo and Juliet Leicester Setting this play in 17th century India makes a lot of sense. The Capulets in Nona Shepphard's production are an Asian merchant family and the Montagues, their English equivalent, so the different culture and background heightens the feud, lends ticity to the secret marriage and makes for stirring fights. It is played out on the Haymarket's vast, bare stage, ...

... Tender study in sincerity Leeds Visiting Mr Green Following its worldwide success after a New York run in 1998, Jeff Baron's first play finally receives its British premiere. However, it is hardly what one would call a typical box office hit: no taboo-breaking, clever plots or hardline politics - just plain old sincerity. This two-hander at the West Yorkshire Playhouse con cerns a ...

... Accomplished set of actors Sadler's Wells Graeae: The Missing Piece Those 12 actors who completed Graeae's new Missing Piece training course for performers who have physical or sensory disabilities have already earned their Equity cards. Six months' intensive training ran the gamut of voice, movement, improvisation, young people's theatre, contemporary text and Shakespeare, ending with a ...

... Performing their socks off Criterion Arts Educational: School of Musical Theatre - Final Year Students Trying to take in the merits of 46 aspirant student performers is a daunting task, especially when they are in large groups of as many as ten, dancing their socks off. Eight performers acted, danced and sang, with the rest offering a combination of two. In the well-choreographed dance ...

... Company Greenwich Playhouse Although the printed programme contained neither a list of musical numbers or any reference to the show's history, it seems fairly clear that Galleon Theatre's admirable staging of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's 3&year-old neurotic musical fantasy, is the late nineties revised version. Apart from reducing the cast to 14, this means that the song Marry Me a ...

... III Go On BITEOO: The Pit Beckett's Molloy trilogy has provided source material for several one-man shows, but since the author's death his literary executors have frowned on stage adaptations of the novels. Luckily for actor Barry McGovem this Gate Theatre pro duction was originally presented in Dublin in 1985, thus escaping the posthumous interdict. London first saw the show the following ...

... Two Lost Souls on a Dirty Night Brazil 500: Grace Brazilian Plinio Marcos' two- hander, written in 1966 and banned in his homeland soon after, would scarcely raise an eyebrow today. Not to say this tale of two derelicts' brutal attempts to get out of the gutter has lost its potency, it is just that under Brazil's military regime at the time merely suggesting the masses would use violent ...