... A Talent To Abuse ARTS RICHARD HUGGETT was first inspired to create a one-man show about Evelyn Waugh when a friend remarked that he was beginning to look like the author. So A Talent to Abuse, which Huggett has brought to the Arts, is definitely a case of working from the outside inwards. Actually, the method succeeds pretty well, the show being based not so much on what Waugh himself wrote ...

... Wild, Wild Women MOUNTVIEW THIS IS a new musical by Michael Richmond with score by Nola York and it does what so many of its predecessors have done. It pillages the classics (the Lysistrata of Aristophanes in this case) for a rum bustious tour of the American West in the days when pioneering, gunlaw, homesteading and sheer adventure were the prongs of expansionist attack. Unlike some glosses ...

... Sweet Like Suga OLD RED LION w FOR A FIRST play, and a three-hander at that, this a very assured piece of writing and it has been done full justice in Andy Jordan's production for Bristol Express Theatre Company. Candida Boyes has created a spongy, camouflage-spattered set which ad mirably evokes the African no-man's land which is the location for this tale of three soldiers from South Africa. ...

... See Naples and Die VOX POPULI IN ONE THING this new theatre com pany are absolutely correct we are far too insular in our approach to other countries' culture. One excepts, of course, dance and music theatre and puppetry, but we take plays in translation and troupes from abroad as they turn up; we don't generate much drama ourselves about what is happen ing elsewhere in the world unless we are ...

... Action PENTAMETERS CHRISTMAS EVE in the workhouse and Christmas Day in a would-be self- sufTicient commune as depicted by Sam Shepard have a great deal in common. In some ways, it's an ironic sort of ex perience to sit through Action in the middle of the summer, though the new production company Performance Exchange which launched this revival of a play first seen in London in 1974 go at it ...

... Across the water MANCHESTER HMS Pinafore AFTER A triumphant six months in Ireland. Noel Pearson's new production of HMS Pinafore has achieved the crossing of the Irish Sea, to anchor for a season in Manchester Opera House. No doubt some G and S purists will raise a few eyebrows but there can be no doubt about the show's entertainment value. Pearson has frankly decided to treat this century ...

... Fifteen Firsts from the Fringe FIFTEEN outstanding new plays, translations or adaptations receiving their first performances at the Edinburgh Festival (or having been performed no more than six times previously) were awarded Fringe Firsts by The Scotsman at this year's festival. Eight of the shows were either solos or performed by two people. Richard Crane and Faynia Williams, who usually ...

... Marchers protest at 'glorification' of Ripper crimes By YASMINE KARTAL NEARLY 500 WOMEN marched through Whitechapel in London on Saturday in protest against the use of the Jack the Ripper Centenary for monetary gain and entertainment. Women from all over the country joined the Action Against the Ripper Centenary Campaign which paraded through the streets where five women were murdered by the ...

... Surrender Dorothy EDINBURGH II IS DlhhlCULI to know what to nuke of this production of Surrender Dorothy. Obviously experimental in nature, and deliberately symbolic, this story of five adults waiting in an orphanage to be adopted is as easy to digest as five day old porridge. Written by the five members of the cast, most probably through methods of improvisation, the story concerns a close ...

... Anybody Home EDINBURGH CONSISTING of two one-act plays by Jack Heifner, this Red Moon Ensemble production of Anybody Home is a gentle understated examination of hu man relationships. Both plays tell the story of a person trapped in a suffocat ing and strangling relationship with another. In the first play, Porch, a young woman sits out on the porch with her mother. Slowly through the mother's ...

... North West's answer to Stringfellows is set to rock Blackpool THE BIGGEST discotheque and nightspot ever to hit Blackpool is now set for an end of August opening, says its Dorset based owner, Michael Pattemore. Despite fierce objections from rival town centre venues, planning and licensing permission for the Palace on the top two floors of the old Palatine Hotel site on Central Promenade has ...

... Loss of two weeks EVERGREEN band leader Joe Loss has put back his return to Blackpool by two weeks. The musical maestro is appearing at the Winter Gardens' Empire Bal lroom one night a week for eight weeks in the summer. His concerts were to have started on Wednesday, July 9, but will now begin on Wednesday, July 23, and run to September 10 inclusive. ...