... 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, ...

... 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 ...