... Surreal comedy worth opening the door for By MOIRA PETTY Playwright Martin Smith borrowed nemesis, hubris and a Crook chorus from the Ancient tragedians and transplanted them to a factory's packaging department in his exuberant comedy Jeff's Kingdom (R4. Wednesday. August 2). The humour became blacker, richer and more frenzied as those tools of the gods swung into action to bring retribution ...

... They turned on, tuned in and dropped out BY MOIRA PETTY What happens to old hippies? Some grow fat, bald and become the backbone of the local council planning department, according to Peter Roberts. In Raising the Sage (R4, Friday, August 4), his hilarious account of the search for one of the former gurus of sixties cool, erstwhile trendies were dis interred by Californian academics ...

... Moving drama with pedigree BY MOIRA PETTY Those time-honoured doggy commands sit, wait and down may not be the obvious catch words of the self-help, psychobabble generation. Yet the discipline of dog training became an allegory for getting on with life in Dogged Persistence (R4, Friday, August 25). This entertaining comedy was written by Martyn Wade for its two redoubtable leading ladies. ...