Costing around 25 million bucks , The Lord of the Rings is a take-your-breath away visual experience. Too bad, all that money couldn't buy a better score or an audience-involving libretto

Kismet, back in revival and done by the ENO-who could ask for anything more? Well, not quite. The score still wows and the cast is top-shelf, but the production is a soggy mess

Patrick Hamilton's a popular bloke. His play Gaslight has now been revived on both sides of the Atlantic. This production has the right atmosphere, but lacks the nail-biting excesses of true melodrama

Crossing the pond, The Drowsy Chaperone has retained its mirth and mayhem, its love of the musical-comedy form and the people who inhabit it

Bening to play Broadway in 2008 in new Murray-Smith play The Female of The Species

Ah, for those musicals of yesterday. Like the Rodgers and Hart Babes in Arms, now on view at the Chichester Festival Theater

Shakespeare's Globe is a wonderful place to play Othello. The company makes use of every nook and cranny of the auditorium. The production is fluid, up close and audible.

It was worth the wait. Ian Mckellen's Lear is one for the ages, as King Lear and The Seagull, finally open in Stratford.

Maxim Gorky's Philistines - in a lively, colloquial new version by Andrew Upton has descended upon the Lyttelton stage.

What are the odds of surviving a fall from an airplane--without a parachute? The romantic fantasy A Matter of Life and Death, at the Olivier, has one possible scenario.