... Up n' Under SWANSEA JOHN GODBER sets this Seven-a- Side, Amateur Rugby League play in Castleford, a town somewhere in England. The first half of the play is set mainly in the Dressing Room of the Wheatsheaf Arms team a reluctant- to-train bunch who expend more energy in lifting their albows than in physical training. A rash, expensive wager to defeat the Cobblers results in a do-or-die ...

... Spokesong I BELFAST THE LYRIC Players Theatre, Belfast is paying tribute to the late Belfast born playwright Stewart Parker by reviving his first stage play, Spokesong. Written in the early seventies at the beginning of the present continuing violence and tensions, it is to a degree both nostalgic and prophetic. Jokey and verging on the ironic in tone, it has much of the flavour of the Parker ...

... The Pirates of Penzance CANTERBURY THE PIRATES of Penzance may be 1 10 years old but there are certainly no cobwebs on Malcolm Knight's production of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera. This is the version that was pre sented on Broadway, to much acclaim, by the New York Shakespeare Festiv al. Directed and choreographed by Jack Gunn it filled the Marlowe, Canterbury, with rumbustious joy. Mike ...

... Vanessa SWANSEA IN VIEW of recent controversy regarding the use of Welsh-language actors and actresses, it seems appropriate that Vanessa, which toured earlier in the winter in Welsh, has been requested of the same company in English. Theatr Gorllewin Morgannwag (West Glamorgan Theatre) scored a I huge success with its production ot Vanessa drws Nesa and the company has been rightly described ...

... Richard III HULL PRODUCING Shakespeare on a shoestring throws up a host of practical challenges which often end up dominating the style of the piece. Such is the case with Great Eastern Stage's Richard III, which differs from others largely by virtue of having a cast of just six, all of whom are men. The switching of roles does tend to make one nobleman very much like another and few real ...

... 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 ...