AS YOU LIKE IT 1 August 1979 By William Shakespeare Directed by John Dexter Settings by Hayden Griffin Costumes by Peter J. Hall Lighting by Andy Phillips Music by Harrison Birtwistle Fight Choreography by William Hobbs

CHARACTER ACTOR Orlando Simon Callow Adam Harry Lomax Oliver Dermot Crowley Dennis William Sleigh Charles Martyn Whitby Celia Marjorie Yates Rosalind Sara Kestleman Touchstone John Normington Le Beau Peter Needham Frederick Nicholas Selby The Exiled Duke Andrew Cruickshank Amiens Oz Clark Corin Anthony Douse Silvius GREG HICKS Jaques Michael Bryant Audrey Selina Cadell Sir Oliver Martext Robin Meredith Phebe Anna Cartaret William Louis Selwyn Page David Morris Jaques Adam Norton Lords attending on The Exiled Duke Daniel Thorndike Robin Meredith Lord attending on Frederick Brian Kent Others: Glyn Baker, Elliott Cooper, Leo Dove, Jane Evers, Nik Forester, Fiona Gaunt, Susan Gilmore, Marianne Morley, James Saxon, Ann Sedgwick, Steven Slater, Dennis Tynsley

THE DOUBLE DEALER September 1978 By William Congreve Directed by Peter Wood Mr. Brisk GREG HICKS . Brenda Blethyn

The Cottesloe stage is festooned with bodies and blood, not to mention one grotesquely redundant tongue, by the time Thomas Kyd's Spanish Tragedy has been rescued from its relative ovscurity by this admirably clear-sighted revival.

Perhaps now The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and such edifying spectacles have cured modern audiences of their squeamishness and the time is indeed ripe to take a fresh look at this extraordinary piece of brilliantly plotted Elizabethan gore and glory.

For this is probably where the principles of modern movie thriller writing really began. It is what can justly be called a rattling good yarn.

Certainly Shakespeare was not above borrowing lavishly from its bold narrative innovations.

The theme of a father avenging the death of his son, killed in the cause of just and political power, is, of course, neatly reversed for Hamlet. And never being one to let an effective stage trick go begging, the play-within-a-play designed to reveal the culprit's guilt was also neatly adapteed.

Of course the Bard added poetry where Kyd could only concoct crude couplets. But you will go far to find any play more economically evolved.

Michael Bogdanov's production takes full advantage of Kyd's skill in changing, in a trice, a moment of tender love-making to a truly horrific massacre. A simple bower of scarlet roses one second is the ideal spot for a lovers' tryost' the next a meat rack for a dripping corpse.

The seemingly comic amateur theatricals, delivered in three languages as a court entertainment, give way to an almost Hitchcockian climax where body tumbles over body in an orgy of murder and suicide - only to have the final expected death thwarted and the agony prolonged.

Michael Bryant makes Hieronimo's grief and deadly revenge all the more plausible by his obvious simplicity and generosity of nature before his son's murder. Men who are strangers to treachery are often overwhelmed by it when it confronts them.

Patti Love brings her well known brand of scarcely suppressed hysteria to fine effect as the wronged mistress and Greg Hicks displays a nice line in smooth arrogance that is the epitome of casual evil. A strong stomach is needed, but you'll be well rewarded.

YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU

4 August 1983

By Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman
Directed by Michael Bogdanov
Designed by Grant Hicks
Lighting by Howard Estes
Sound: Rick Clark
with the Bob Burns Quartet

Greg Hicks' reviews

CHARACTER ACTOR Essie Carmichael Janine Duvitski Penelope Sycamore Geraldine McEwan Kheba Earlene Bentley Paul Sycamore Gary Raymond Mr. de Pinna Arthur Whybrow Ed Carmichael Charles Wagner Donald Norman Beaton Martin Vanderhof Jimmy Jewel Alice Sycamore Wendy Morgan Henderson Stephen Gordon CHARACTER ACTOR Tony Kirby GREG HICKS Boris Kolenkhov Brewster Mason Gay Wellington Gaye Brown Mr Kirby Ronald Hines Mrs Kirby Irene Sutcliffe Three Men Paul Bentall Peter Gordon Bill Moody Olga Margaret Courtenay

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