... Colchester gets Hip By LIZ MULLEN AN EMPTY Edwardian theatre has been restored to its former glory and given a £3 million facelift, to reopen as a hi-tech night club. The Hippodrome, in Colchester High Street, received its new lease of life from businessman Roger Williams' Big R Leisure group and was officially opened at a cham pagne guest night by Margaret Thatcher impersonator Steve Nat ion ...

... A gig gag to help solve tax problems By BRIAN ATTWOOD A ROCK group with a difference has launched its international career this month before an audi ence of admiring fellow artists and an army of accountants. Tiny Hates Tax is a band with no members, no track record and none of the vinyl variety either to boast of. Undeterred by this obvious lack of experience the group announced last week it ...

... Hollies tour THE HOLLIES start their 1988 tour at Fort Regent, Jersey on September 29, followed by Beau Sejour Leisure Cen tre, Guernsey the next night. Returning to the mainland, they are at Harrogate on October 7, with Pre ston, Northampton, Hastings, Poole, Bristol, Manchester, Lincoln, Notting ham, Exeter, Dartford, Southend, Reading, Portsmouth, Cardiff, Canter bury, Croydon, Norwich, ...

... L'lncoronazione di Poppea SPITALFIELDS THIS OPERA London production of Monteverdi's last opera, composed for Venice when he was still a remarkably active 75, was given in an unusually full version prepared by Clifford Bartlett. It was fortunate that ChristChurch had been furnished with comfortable new seating for the occasion, because aunuM iuui uuura ui muMi was in volved. I am certainly ...

... The Sleeping Beauty ROH WITH TWO major ballet companies in London last week (and two others arriving this week and next, comparisons may be invidious, but they are also unavoidable. Watching the Australian Ballet at the Royal Opera House in The Sleeping Beauty I missed the richness of movement of the Kirov Ballet. The Australian style in common with most European schools is less deeply ...

... New threat to venues By BRIAN ATTWOOD PENNYPINCHING venues who force shows to take percentage box office splits will face costly claims by artists if they fail to provide proper publicity. The threat follows a court victory this week by a jazz promoter, backed by the Musicians Union, which successfully sued a midlands based local authority for breach of contract. Leicester County Court awarded ...

... No talent to keep contest going A BIG MONEY talent contest has been scrapped at Blackpool's Bloomfield Club because of a lack of suitable performers. After being widely advertised, the competition was dropped after organiser and local agent Derek Allen, together with club officials, gave the thumbs down to the standard of local hopefuls. We didn't attract as many initial entrants as we ...

... Angry Minute Dance Plays RIVERSIDE ANGRY MINUTE DANCE PLAYS is the title of a collection of vignettes made by Toby Armour and her company from New York. It is a perplexing title since few of the scenes appeared to be either angry or minute-wherever you put the accent. Perhaps it was the audience that was meant to get angry, every minute or so. Only at the first performance at Riverside ...

... Buffery sows seeds THE ROYAL Shakespeare Com pany's assistant director in Strat ford, Bill Buffery, is to take over as the new artistic director of the Orchard Theatre from mid January. He will succeed Nigel Bryant, who will leave for a post with the BBC in Birmingham as a radio drama producer after five years in which saw the audience treble. A spokesman for the company said Buffery would ...

... Spring term HUMPHREY LYTTLETON and his Band start off the spring term of concerts at University College School, Hampstcad on January 26. The Top Brass Jazz Orchestra directed by Bob Wheal, with vocal ists Dennis Lotis and Lee Gibson, follow on February 2, Canadian saxophonist Jim Galloway on February 9, Adelaide Hall (Febru ary 23) and the Jean Toussaint Quartet (March 2). ...

... Dench talks JUDI DENCH speaks at the first 1989 meeting of the Gallery First Nighters Club on January 8, to he held at 7. 15 pm at the Club for Acts and Actors, 20 Bedford Street, WC2. ...

... Serving up just desserts PAUL CHAND devours Theatre de Complicite's revenge treatment RIVERSIDE The Visit DURENMATT'S vicious and highly theatrical parable of murder and greed is given the full treatment by Theatre de Complicite in Maurice Valency's adaptation. That rather dubious word adapt means in this case a richlv energetic and comical patina. Complicity patina becomes the over lay from ...