... Safe In Our Hands LEEDS THE LATEST production at the Quarry Theatre of the West Yorkshire Playhouse is the world premiere of a new play. Safe In Our Hands by Andy de la Tour, better known as a stand-up comic entertainer. In it he attacks the running down of the National Health Service by the present government, but does it in a most nnarious manner that raises gales of laughter from the ...

... Of Mice and Men BIRMINGHAM ANTHONY Clark's production of John Steinbeck's play (adapted from his novel in 1937) has a sustained power and tension which keeps you on the edge of your seat and finally drops you into almost unbearable sadness tor failed hopes and dreams. The theme of loneliness is set im mediately as a roadside boarding flies away to reveal a wide-open, burnished landscape on ...

... Eurydice CHICHESTER THE original myth of Orpheus and his love affair with Eurydice served Anouilh well in his version of the play which was first produced in England as Point of Departure almost 50 years ago. The latest production at the Chichester Festival Theatre Minerva Studio Theatre under the title Eury-- dice, in a translation by Peter Meyer, is a very direct and well developed ...

... The Cat and the Canary STEVENAGE SPOOKY Glencliff Manor, the setting for this production at the Gordon Craig Theatre, is a place where anything can happen. The celebrity comedy lead, for exam ple, can get sloshed in the face so hard it takes five minutes for him to get up, blinking and wiping his eyes. On the other hand, the gags in this adaptation of John Willard's classic twenties com edy ...

... Noises Off LEICESTER THIS production, directed by Ultz, begins confidently through quietly. By the end of the first act, not much has happened, but the audience feels it is in good hands. The second act exceeds all hopes and is riotously funny, but the play ends disappointingly. The delicate interolay of the olavers' characters and their parts fails to be maintained for three acts. They ...

... Rebecca CHELTENHAM THE GLOOMY corridors of Manderley tower high and sombre in Chris Crosswell's single setting of Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier's brooding masterpiece which is at the Everyman. Its themes of love and lost love have been explored well since its first show ing in 1940 and, here again, John Durnin's production demonstrates its timeless appeal. It is however not without a few bumps. ...

... Cuttin' a Rug DUNDEE THE lads and lasses from the carpet factory let their hair down to amusing effect at the staff dance which forms the play by John Byrne, wittily titled Cuttin' a Rug, produced at Dundee Rep by Alan Lyddiard. It is the middle pan of The Slab Boys trilogy, Paisley Patterns, and has been seen and heard before under different equally apposite titles. Set in 1957, it recalls ...

... Tale of Two Cities NORTHAMPTON NORTHAMPTON'S Royal Theatre has an outstanding pedigree when it comes to productions of Charles Dickens adaptations. Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol number amongst highly memorable productions to come from this small provincial theatre. The latest Dickens is a Tale of Two Cities adapted for the stage by David Horlock. Directed by the Royal's artis tic ...

... Prick Song for the New Leviathan OLD RED LION PLAIN Clothes Productions invited James Stock to write a new play for production at the Old Red Lion Theatre and Stock's unusual title A Prick Song for the New Leviathan mirrors the chaos of the setting in the aftermath of the 1650 revolution in England.. In the wake of the Civil War, with the king beheaded and the churches stripped of their ...

... Pericles LEICESTER PERHAPS Victorian prudishness and its hangover has something to do with the fact that Pericles is one of the least performed of Shakespeare's works. This wasn't always the case, though, and in the Bard's time it had great success at the Globe Theatre where a bit of spice always went down well. With incest, love, an ancient Greek hit-man, a shipwreck, treachery and a wife and ...

... A winning stroke BASINGSTOKE The Cat And The Canary WHO would have thought that Ian Mullins would sign off after eight seasons as Horseshoe's artistic director with a show so monumentally typical as this? John Willard's antique Gothic comedy-thriller is pure essence of Mullins: lightweight, light-hearted escapism with a good, if undemanding pedigree and sure crowd-pleasing qualities. In ...

... Cabaret YORK THE YORK Theatre Royal Company, with its first musical for four years (except for Christmas shows), has met the special demands of Cabaret with considerable success. Director Michael Winter brought in Dudley Stevens as the Emcee who runs the tawdry revels in a low night club in Berlin in about 1930, and howls his welcome to thus un ashamed market-place of sex, tearing the ...