... He's Having a Baby Suffolk. Eye Baby Troy's genesis in Deborah Sparkes' new play, given its world premiere at the Eye Theatre, makes for some amusement but I'm not really sure what it is all about. Sarah and Mark are having a baby. Very early on in a mono logue Sarah informs us that, unfortunately, it's probably not actually Mark's baby. Mark has a very low sperm count ('All the best dads are ...

... A night worth turning out for Exmouth Vern Allen Premier Showcase It said a great deal about the respect there is for Vern Allen Management when one saw the full house at the Pavilion on the seafront in Exmouth, in the midst of the worst storms since 1987. It was a wet, windy, abysmal night with an angry sea, hurled on by the high winds lashing the show, making a very unpleasant walk from ...

... Pitch battle is a clear winner Cambridge Theatre The Beautiful Game Andrew Lloyd Webber's latest musical, which he has written with the unlikely collaboration of Ben Elton, is not. as you might expect, about football. The 1969 cup-winning Catholic youth team, with at least one token Protestant member, we meet at the start of the musical is just the jumping-off ground for a story, sadly ...

... The Maids Rosemary Branch Time has not been as kind to Jean Genet's work as one would wish, yet there lingers an energy in his plays which, if tapped with respect, can often startlingly reveal his intended vision. Sadly this is not the case in this superficially slick upgrade from Darker Arts. Admittedly an uneven piece in the first place. Genet's original inspired by a real-life incident of ...

... Electra Courtyard This squarely conventional rendering of Sophocles' play presents the eponymous heroine as histrionic adolescent, wailing over Daddy's death and exasperating Mother with her moody belligerence. Indeed, the Freudian father-love complex bom from the chronicle of Electra appears to influence director Robert McCarthy more than the nuances of the original text. This is a small ...

... The Boy Who Left Home Lyric, Hammersmith Studio For anyone who has ever suspected that children's stories -- with their vicious violence and deeply disturbing emotions -- are only suitable for adults, Michael Wynne's delicious new play is as welcome as a newborn babe. In this collection of fairy tales rewritten in a convincingly modern idiom, he tells the story of Boy, who leaves home and ...

... On Line and Paranoid in the Sentimental City Finborough Kicking off a season of plays about London, Chris Lee's ambitious and panoramic work embraces both the darkness and the promise of the metropolis. Fatima, an Algerian woman, lives in a crumbling high-rise in King's Cross with her children, David and Caria. With their build ing threatened by demolition, the family collapses as Fatima ...

... The Brain Natural History Museum Founded in 1974, Forkbeard Fantasy is one of Britain's leading mixed-media performance companies. Its latest show, written and directed by Paul B Davies, bears all the hallmarks of its distinctive style, making imaginative interactive use of actors, film, animation and special effects to create some inspired visual theatre. The company's brand of comic ...

... Amusing look at sex in the city Theatre Royal, Haymarket The Blue Room The question that will immediately come to mind is Is The Blue Room just as good without Nicole Kidman? To which the answer is obviously Yes of course it is. Not that David Hare's free adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's La Ronde is necessarily a good play. Nor should one expect it to be. It is a cyclical sexual romp in ...

... Shipshape in Bristol fashion Bristol So Long Life Award-winning theatre group Show of Strength pulled out all the stops to persuade Stephanie Cole to star in the premiere of Peter Nichols' new play at its Tobacco Factory home -- and how it has paid off. Both Nichols and Cole are native Bristolians, and one of the joys of this piece is their com mand of the native patois, literally adding an T ...

... Shelf life Exeter Theatre Alibi has rightfully won a reputation for quirky and penetrating investigations into small- scale living, largely owing to the work of its writer-ir-chief, Daniel Jamieson. Although it might be time to see Theatre Alibi bring its undoubted skills to bigger themes, this piece at the Exeter Arts Centre covers familiar terri tory, but is a welcome addition to its ...

... Subtle portrait of family ties Manchester The Beauty Queen of Leenane The luck of the Irish is certainly with Martin McDonagh, whose first play. The Beauty Queen of Leenane, having premiered in Dublin in 1996, transferred to the Royal Court and then America, gathering awards along the way. The first in the Leenane trilogy, this black comedy of pain, love and loss is brought to the Library ...