... Ironmlstress Cardiff An imposing naked female figure, cast in iron, dominates the setting and action of this April de Angelis play. In its shadow, Martha, the widow of 19th century ironmaster Abraham Darby, fights to control her foundry in a man's world, gaining a reputation as an uncompromising ironmistress. But as she prepares her wilful daughter, nicknamed Little Cog, for marriage, ...

... Carmen Cambridge/Touring Sex and violence, passion in an exotic setting and irresistible tunes make Bizet's opera a favourite with audiences. From the opening bars of the overture, taken at a cracking pace by conductor Paul McGrath, this is an exhilarating production. Staged at the Cambndge Arts Theatre, it is costumed by Chrissie Madison in the latest clubbing fashions, sung in English and, ...

... Baby Baby Kings Head Theatre Ci ub THE SCARLET Theatre Company create their productions through a process of devising and improvising upon a theme, working with the writer to build a script through rehearsal. Baby Baby is the result of a collaboration by the core company, Grainne Byme, Sophia Lovell Smith and Maggi Morrison, with the writer, Anne Caulfield, and the director Birte Pedersen. ...

... Dames At Sea Oldham GEORGE Haimsohn and Robin Miller have written a delightful pastiche of the Hollywood musical in Dames At Sea at the Oldham Coliseum and part of its success lies in the naive charm of those vintage years captured affectionately by Jim Wise's nostalgic music. The small cast of six play roles familiar to everyone who fondly remembers the traditional plot of finding a bam and ...

... Romeo And Juliet BIRMINGHAM At the first schools matinee of Birmingham Royal Ballet's 'new' Romeo and Juliet--in Kenneth MacMillan's familiar 1965 Royal Ballet version, newly designed by Paul Andrews--when Romeo (Joseph Cipolla rejected the challenge to a dual from Tybalt (Even Williams) the young audience was held in thrall. For at this performance's most forcefully dramatic moment, as ...

... The Return Of Ulysses ENO ENO's revival of its 1989 production of Monteverdi's The Return Of Ulysses is not a happy occasion. David Freeman's staging oscillates between the banal and the moving, though even the dodgier moments might have been overcome by stronger casting. David Roger's clever design makes for fluidity of narrative, areas of con current action often throwing up significant ...

... Eugene Onegin Haslemere PUSHKIN'S poem classic Yevgeny Onegin was a natural for Tchaikovsky's music. As he composed his fifth opera he clearly saw the potential of the letter scene which it is said he wrote first. It depicts the heroine in her most emotional state and the beauty of the composer's music in that long passage fully justified his use of the Russian's poetry. After a very poor ...

... Don-ing an ideal accent PETER HEPPLE sees Liverpool meet Naples LYTTELTON Napoli Milionaria IT HAS taken the National a long time to find another play by Eduardo de Filippo to follow Saturday, Sunday, Monday, but Napoli Milionaria looks set to repeat the other's success and may even be a better play. Set again in Naples, it predicates by 40 years the theme of Alan Ayck- bourn's A Small Family ...

... Notre Dame OXFORD NOTRE Dame, a new musical, or rather musical thriller, was premiered in workshop form at the Old Fire Station Studio Theatre, Oxford and a veritable Tosca of musicals it turned out to be. Gone are the cats, the trains, the chess-board and the phantom; here we have torture, a flogging, a hanging and a presumed suicide, all well inside two hours. Based on the novel by Victor ...

... 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 ...