... Money from America Pentameters The themes of this new play by Tom O'Brien recur obsessively in Irish theatre: the conflict over land, the scars the Irish diaspora left on those who went away and those who stayed behind, the baleful influence of whiskey and porter. O'Brien at first handles them deftly, but loses credibility when the plot turns into a simplistic whodunit. Phil Newman's smoke ...

... An Ideal Husband Huddersfield/Touring A curious play this. Wilde's wit and satire are as fresh and biting as ever but the political scandal at the heart of An Ideal Husband seems to be too seriously han dled. It should be sent up. This is not, after all, a Rattigan play. Seen at the Lawrence Batley, Middle Ground's touring version is packed with style, particularly style of manner and of move ...

... Don't Forget Me Paisley/Touring Godfrey Hamilton's new play is poetic and deeply moving and it is also very funny indeed, full of barbed comments about the state of play in Hollywood, and the state of players in the film- going world. This is the story of Angus a movie producer haunted by the image of a B-movie queen and his young lover Chip, an aspiring movie star who enters the Hollywood ...

... Comic shock of dementia Birmingham A Wedding Story Portraying Alzheimer's disease is a risk, and no apology would be good enough if a writer or actor got it wrong. Bryony Lavery gets it so unerringly right in her new play at The Door at the Rep that the audience is comfortable with laughing even while witnessing the shocking descent into dementia which Evelyn, a doctor married to a ...

... 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 ...

... Robin Hood and the Babes in the Wood Newark Robin Hood can be a gutsy, swash buckling tale and always goes down well in Nottinghamshire. But in a long and over-padded show at the Palace, the storyline gets very frag mented and there is never any real sense that the Babes are in danger. Fine talent like that of Lisa Jane Williams, a tall and truly impressive Robin Hood is squandered with too ...

... Aladdin Bournemouth Lavishly-staged, this presentation from E&B Productions at the Pavilion offers a wealth of fun, spectacle, music and dance. Jeremy Beadle's Wishee Washee may be short on characteri sation but he proceeds to wow the crowd with all manner of buffoonery and audience participation antics. Gareth Hunt earns ear-splitting boos as Abanazar, and temporarily relaxes into a classic ...