... Icetravaganza GREAT YARMOUTH THE CYNICS will no doubt claim that, in choosing to stage Icetravaganza' at his Hippodrome theatre, Peter Jay has taken the easy option and avoided the traditional wrath incurred by the animal rights brigade against putting on a summer circus. But then a cynic, as Oscar so memorably remarked, is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. ...

... Bedtime Story BRIGHTON NOBODY can provoke an air of action and excitement on stage better than Sean O'Casey. The innate volatility of his characters finds ready expression in the soft lilt of the Southern Irish tongue, and even if the situation itself may be fairly static, he still contrives to fill it with movement and animation. Bedtime Story, the one-act burles que presented by ...

... The Alchemist GLASGOW IT WAS a glittering evening which lost something of its gloss at the opening night of the Old Athenaum with Ben Jonson's The Alchemist and when the old renowned venue of The Royal Scottish Academy of Drama and Music took shape again as the Scottish Youth Theatre. Unfortunately the cast was not whol ly successful in moulding the old familiar characters into reasonable ...

... Mapp and Lucia KENILWORTH THE NOVELS of E. F. Benson, which have already made a successful adaptation to both radio and television, spring up afresh in a new musical version for the stage, the creation of Peter James and Barry Jackson for the amateur Talisman Theatre in Kenil-worth. feter James adaptation smoothly conflates events and narrative from all three books to create a seamless com edy ...

... Waiting for Godot NEWCASTLE IT MAY well be, as if repeatedly forewarned in Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot, that there really is Nothing to be done to stop the sky from falling down upon us all, but until that time comes there is everything still to be said. The great paradox about this, the most enigmatic play in all of theatre, is that in saying so little it begins to mean so much. ...

... The Silver Tassie DUBLIN THE DUBLIN stage these days seems to illustrate a university course description that could read something like European Influences on Irish Theatre. First Friel's Chekhovian Aristocrats and now Sean O'Casey's The Silver Tassie at the Abbey. German expressionism was the in fluence O'Casey overlaid onto his Irish naturalism, with mixed success. His 1928 anti-war ...

... Lykos: The Danger in The Maze EYE BEING in a maze has extraordinary effects on the human mind. John Stuart Anderson's remarkable work, Lykos: The Danger in The Maze, is similarly convoluted. 1 wo young and gitted actors, Ouy Pearson and Mark Young, move the piece along gently and lovingly, lead ing the audience through corridors of puzzlement, into glades of understand ing, finally to the ...

... The Recruiting Officer SALISBURY LOVE, marriage, money and the military all come under fire in George Farquhar's good-natured satire of 18th century life, The Recruiting Officer, at the Salisbury Playhouse. The action is set, appropriately enough, in a small country town invaded by two recruiting officers vieing with each other for the affec tions and loyalties of the townspeople, both male ...

... Johnny Strikes Up SCOTLAND MUSIC Theatre Scotland have done neither themselves, nor, one suspects, Ernst Krenek any favours by choosing his Johnny Strikes Up as their debut production. There is no doubt that there is a ready market in Scotland for small scale opera/music theatre. Scottish Opera regularly plays to packed houses, and the twice yearly seasons of the amateur operatic soci eties' ...

... Noises Off BRISTOL FEW PLAYS could be better suited to a theatre school end-of-year production than a farce about a theatre company rehearsing a farce. This is the premise of Michael Frayn's backstage laughter-spinner, and the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School tackled it with relish not to mention welcome evidence of talent at the Theatre Royal. Plainly, there are hazards for young actors ...

... Peer Gynt EXETER THE CYGNET touring operation increases in efficiency and artistic standards. Peer Gynt is a saga of a play which needs complicated staging to cover the many different scenes. Director Monica Shalls has stripped it down to the essentials and concentrated on costume changes to indicate changes in time and location. The heroic role of Peer Gynt falls to Andrew Howard, who ...

... Peer Gynt EXETER THE CYGNET touring operation increases in effiencey and artistic standards. Peer Gynt is a saga of a play which needs complicated staging to cover the many different scenes. Director Monica Shalls has stripped down the to essentials and concentrated on costume changes to indicate changes in time and location. The heroic role of Peer Gynt falls to Andrew Howard, who starts ...