... The Rivals Basingstoke Director Alasdair Ramsay and designer Elroy Ashmore have done to Sheridan's play what many try to do to Shakespeare and fail. To inject some variation into a well tried and tested play is always a risk and to mix tradition with contemporary art is often an interesting combination. Costumes are traditional, but with a quirky addition. Each character wears the bouffant ...

... Snapshots Manchester Sibling rivalry taken to the extreme and viewed through a series of snapshots is the main theme of this new work at the Royal Exchange Theatre. Written by Fiona Padfield, it is an adult play which concerns two sisters. Catherine and Lian. They are embroiled in a confused relationship of love and hate. Jessica Lloyd and Amy Marston give fine performances as the sisters, ...

... 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 ...

... Revenge of the Story Spirits Pleasance London Jan Blake's work transforms the theatre from a place of conflict to a place of storytelling, and this series of five stories from African folklore, devised and performed by Blake herself, is a real feast. The five are framed by the larger tale of a young man who keeps the stories he hears crammed together in a bag, instead of telling them to others ...

... Original Spin New End This is the type of play I can remember seeing at Golders Green Hippodrome in the late fifties, prior to the West End, a statement sometimes made more in hope than reality. While watching it I actually found myself mentally casting it with leading players of that era. Perhaps there might still be a market for such pleasantly undemanding fare, but I fear not. ...

... My Business is to Love Barbican Hail In this extraordinary compilation about America's enigmatic lyric poet Emily Dickinson, Claire Bloom read her poetry, Renee Fleming sang American composers' adaptations, and the two of them half-read, half-acted William Luce's deft narrative of her life, based on her letters and poems. A figure of Dickinson emerges, glintingly intelligent, her ...

... Small Talk Brockley Jack Writer Dale Reynolds' play is a sometimes engaging, but more often tiresome, attempt to refract the state we are in today in a darkly comic light. Nine disparate characters sit in a pub chatting and bickering. Their random talk reveals a distorted version of the present in which big business, or busy ness as it is known, controls and shapes the world while society ...

... The Angel's Share Dundee/Touring There are two routes into Chris Dolan's new play, produced by Borderline Theatre and here seen at Dundee Rep. On one level, it is about the point of impact at which market-driven forces and modem technology lock horns with dusty traditions in that most hallowed of spots, the whisky distillery. The angel's share is a poetic term for the whisky that is lost ...

... Mistress of the Inn Perth/Touring This production of Carlo Goldoni's period piece will tour the Perthshire community after its run at Perth Theatre. Director Michael Winter has obviously had this in mind, as it will work better in smaller venues. As a big house production, it is very much a non-event. Peter Watson's new version is plain almost to the point of banality and there is a certain ...

... 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, ...