... The Flag Chelmsford/Touring Alex Ferguson's free adaptation of Robert Shaw's post-First World War novel is Northern Touring Theatre Company's spring show. As Ferguson notes, Britain had then become a vast psychiatric ward, through which the victims of Armageddon wandered raving neglected, unknown, until they died. A seven-strong cast play out the drama on Cath Young's bleak scaffolding ...

... Bath The Free State Janet Suzman's play at the Theatre Royal, in which she stars, as well as co-directing with Martin L Platt, is described as a South African response to The Cherry Orchard. It is actually a close adaptation, transposed to South Africa with inserted sequences of political discussion to illuminate the play's application to its new setting. The Ranevskys are now liberal white ...

... Taut study of sexual ethics Edinburgh Parsifal Scottish Opera has created a magnificent version of Wagner's work, the first in Scotland for 30 years. Director Silviu Purcarete has organised a stately, timeless feel to the production, but the real applause should go to music director Richard Armstrong whose conducting brings the opera to life. As the stage fades from grey to reveal the ...

... Oliver and Cinderella Hackney Empire/Touring Panto has come early, in a way and Blue Mountain Theatre is packing them in as usual, this time for a remarkably unsentimental version of the Cinderella story set in Jamaica. You may have already guessed that Cinders (Denise Pitter) is hardly a happy girl, incarcerated as she is as the maid in her step-family's home. Help comes in the form of not ...

... 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 ...

... Macbeth ALEXANDRA PALACE THERE WAS a yellow flag flying from the topmost tier of the half-size reconstruction of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre at Alexandra Palace. It didn't denote that the place was in quarantine, suffering from the plague, though from the absence of spectators it could well have been. The fluttering pennant indicated, as in Tudor times, that a play would be performed on ...

... Battersea Blues LATCHMERE BAD PLAYS on the fringe are legion. But Terry Gilbert's Battersea Blues is good, very good, because it sets out to be fast and funny and succeeds in being just that. If Hampstead is the London setting where the trendies usually live, he makes a transplant south of the river to Battersea, utilising all the current jokes from Filofaxes to Jeffrey Archer, edging in ...

... Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Scunthorpe One of the good things about panto is that the storylines are flexible. For instance, I do not remember a Court Jester in the Disney version of this great tale but here we have Dusty the Court Jester, played brilliantly by Rusty Goffe, bringing an extra dimension of fun to this great John Spillers production at the Plowright. Goffe teams up with the ...

... Peter Pan Guildford Peter Pan is usually all plot without padding and at the Yvonne Amaud you could add colourful presentation with vivid designs by Gary Underwood and clever lighting by Trevor Wallace. Fronting the exciting scenery is a vivacious and cheeky Peter Pan performed by Issy van Randwyck. She throws herself wholeheartedly into the role, playing in the principal boy style with clear ...