... Trick or treat GLOBE Man of the Moment WITH THE exception of Roger Glos- sop's Mediterranean villa setting, in which we set a wide patio complete with the swimming pool on stage, there is nothing tricksy about Alan Ayck- bourn's latest play, no evidence of one of those puzzles that Ayckbourn allegedly sets himself to solve in rical terms. But that is not quite the truth, because beneath the ...

... THE PLACE Spring Loaded IT SAYS a great deal for Union Danci that for three out of four years it ha: opened the annual dance festival Spring Loaded, at The Place. Th ...

... The Crucible OLIVIER THIS splendid version of Miller's 1953 masterpiece, his finest play and perhaps the finest play in American drama, gives us uniformly good per formances, with striking acting from Tom Wilkinson as John Proctor and Zoe Wanamaker as his falsely accused wife Elizabeth. If the William Dudley set, all gleam ing new wood, is overfussy and does little to suggest the light and ...

... Waltz of the Toreadors NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE THE EXQUISITELY wrought production of The Waltz of the Toreadors at the Shaw Festival by the English director-designer team of David Giles and Kenneth Mellor made one feel that an Anouilh revival was nigh. Not that the master French playwright has exactly gone out of fashion--his Eurydice is being done this season at Chichester but one almost felt ...

... Colvin resignation forces Edinburgh to reorganise BY KARTAL YASMINE ONE OF THE most important co-ordinators of the Edinburgh Festival, associate director Sheila Colvin, is to leave, and discussions are already underway to establish how the management team should oe re-organisea in oraer to cope with her departure. Colvin has been at the Festival for the last ten years and has been the right ...

... Missing Persons THE WEST End's longest running production ever. The Mousetrap, is planning a major celebration to mark its 15,000th performance next month, when it is hoped all the leading ladies ever to have appeared in the show will be present. Producer Sir Peter Saundcrs success fully organised a similar celebration to mark the show's 21st anniversary, but this time not even Equity has been ...

... Making the most of the Max factor Peter Hepple on a production that's better by design OLD VIC The Tempest IT IS meant as no criticism of Jonathan Miller, whose choices of production for his first season at the Old Vic have been tempting if not invariably successful, that his discovery of the year has been designer Richard Hudson, whose work has previously chiefly been known to opera lovers. ...

... Checkmates BROADWAY CHECKMATES, the new comedy at Broadway's 46th Street Theatre, is too earthy and unpretentious to find favour with the more intellectual critics who praised August Wilson's Fences, the somewhat heavier drama which ceded it at the same theatre. Both are concerned with relationships in black families, both veer dangerously close to predictable soap-opera, and both con tain ...

... Fresh as the day it was first revived OPERA NORTH La Boheme DAVID FREEMAN'S freshly inventive production of Puccini's La Boheme is the last of the trio of operas with which Opera North opens its Tenth Anniversary season in Leeds. Although it is the second revival, the production has retained all its virtues--the pace, the wit, the fluidity of action, the deftly controlled pathos. The evening ...

... Wot No Bananas COVENTRY FOR THEIR annual theatre show for school and family audiences the Belgrade TIE Company have written a children's drama Wot No Bananas set in the Second World War, which looks behind the well-worn facade of military heroics at the lives of ordinary people caught up in frightening events beyond their control. The bombing of Coventry on November 14, 1940, which laid ...

... Sadler's Wells Opera goes for £100,000 BRITAIN'S biggest commercial opera company is looking for more than £100,000 from business backers to keep it running in 1986. New Sadler's Wells Opera is about to begin its most ambitious year's work so far and the last under a £400,000 sponsorship deal due to run out in the autumn. Founded in 1983, NSWO operates out of the famous lyric theatre in North ...

... Taking sex out of the theatre spotlight A LEADING theatre lighting company has been accused of being sexist and offensive to women working in the theatre industry-through an advertisement which was approved and selected by women. Coemar Ltd of Northampton have incurred the wrath of the Women's Playhouse Trust and the production manager of the Royal Court Theatre in London with an advert ...