... The Incredible Vanishing CARLISLE THIS IS AN urgent police message--32 children have disappeared from street markets in Whitley Bay. bringing the total over the last three months to more than 250! Parents are warned to keep their youngsters indoors until police have solved the mystery. This ingenious tale of the spiriting away of children by Her Marshesty. monarch of the drains, forms the core ...

... Candy floss concoction COVENTRY Can Can THERE WERE lots of good things in Robert Hamlin's ambitious production of Cole Porter's fifties musical. There was a fine display of positive, bravura acting, setting just the right tone for this candy floss concoction of a show. Liz Whiting, as the apparently hard-bitten Pistache, puppet mistress of Parisian cafe life, gave both warmth and edge to the ...

... in Lambeth EAST DULWICH TAVERN A MAGICAL opening to Jack Shepherd's play on William and Catherine Blake, and Tom Paine (lighting design by Sophie Cox and design by Jake Shepherd) shows us William and Kate sitting, starkers, up a tree in their Lambeth garden. The sudden arrival of Tom (Bob Peck) as unexpected guest fleeing the mob which is roaming the London streets, intent to do him mis ...

... The Revenge of the Lambton Worm NEWCASTLE THE REVENGE of the Lambton Worm, continuing the story begun in last year's highly successful Newcastle Playhouse show, and fronted again by the same company of local celebrities--foremost among them being poet 'Little' Billy Fane and commercial radio DJ, Alan 'Flashing Blade' Robson--is cheap, cheerful, boisterous stuff which relies more on the ...

... Daisy Pulls It Off HARROGATE HARROGATE Theatre's production of the play Daisy Pulls It Off, by Denise Deegan, is a sheer delight to watch. It is a most engaging romp set in a rather snobbish girls' boarding school, Grangewood School for Girls, where scholarship-winning new pupil Daisy Meredith is looked down on and made to feel uncomfortable by both staff and pupils alike, with very few ...

... John Bull's Other Island CORK THE IRELAND of today is very dif ferent to the place it was in 1904 or is it? The Irish Theatre Company's new production of John Bull s Other Island, at the Cork Opera House prior to its opening in Dublin, shows that while the slogans may change and the watch-words alter, human nature stays the same. The wit of George Bernard Shaw has certainly lost none of its ...

... Blackpool cabaret THE CHANGING face of Blackpool's night life continues with the recent opening of Stix. General manager is Harry Hargreaves, a former local compere and one time private hotelier. It is definitely not a social club we want to get right away from that image this is a night club, said Hargreaves. To that end Stix has a 2 am licence, an intimate restaurant, regular cabaret ...

... Lest we forget FARNHAM Freedom To Forget TO CAPTURE the flavour of the Battle of Britain with six actors confined to a tiny pub bar and a small dispersal hut at a fighter station is really beyond the capability of the theatre. However, the objective of John Golley and Anthony Attard's new play, Freedom To Forget, was not to dwell on nostalgia but rather to express the thoughts of those who ...

... Baby WYTHENSAW NICE tunes, neat performances, naff plot. The conception is simple, it's about three couples having a baby, end of concept, beginning of pregnancy. It has to be said that people who have experienced this, especially the middle-aged ladies present, thought that a musical about three couples naving a baby was marvellous. The music of David Shire is some times schmaltzy, ...

... PLYMOUTH Elizabeth's Last Stand AS NIGHT falls Betty, a drab mouselike eccentric, is transformed into the resplendent Virgin Queen, ruling over kitchen and country. Mime artist iNola Kae gave an im aginative if slightly tedious perform ance as the eccentric who fall under the spell of the ghostly good Queen Bess. The pedantic attenuon to detail at the start of the show, combined with the ...

... LEATHERHEAD Doq Days TO WRITE to a high degree of literacy and then to follow it up with the artistic ability to use the words in a high degree of acting is the ambition of many but the accomplishment of only a very few. Without doubt John Kane deserves to enter that double hall of fame for his one man play. Dog Days seems rather an unexcit ing title for a work that describes with much ...

... Played with underlying sensuality NEWBURY Rosmersholm IBSHN's controversial social comment and psychological, symbolic prose provided a feast for the analysts but perhaps his plays were, to a greater or less degree, autobiographical. He had known social disgrace and poverty after his father went bankrupt. He had made a servant girl pregnant when he was 18. He became increasingly disillusioned ...