The Observer from London, Greater London, England • 78

9 SUNDAY 9 APRIL 1995 THEATRE MI Kate Kelhway enjoys a rich Irish steward, learns 'officespeak5 and sends a stiff memorandum to playwrights who split women in three NEIL LIBBERT Borneo (ZubinVaria, right) and Ban volio (Michael Gould) at the RSC Stratford talking reeks of a college play- wrighting-by-numbers course, but gets better as it goes on, and Richard Olivier's smart production is a happy, emotional fusion of Sharman MacDonald, Wendy. Wasserstein and Albee's Three Tall Women: hot looks as if she has come straight out of Happy Families. When she measures Dunne for his uniform, he begs for a gold suit and to our amazed pleasure, she humours him by using yellow cotton. The play resembles the dark suit that she makes, lightened with unexpected gold. Since seeing Vaclav Havel's The Memorandum at the Orange Tree Theatre, I have been practising Ptydepe, an 'office language'.

Even pidgin Ptydepe is hard: there are many multi -syllabled words meaning 'boo' and the word for wombat is. 319 characters long. At least I have grasped the thuggishly, cumbersome word 'zextraheight' which means point of view. My zextraheight about this allegory for life under communism is that, seen now, it is safe. But in Prague in 1965, the jokes must have seemed dangerously close to home.

The managing director's life is hell, an out-tray with him in it. But Sam Walters's production is fun. Michel Tremblay and Edward Albee should put their heads together (or have them banged together) since both have produced loathsome plays splitting one woman's life into different stages. Albee's Three Tall Women was 'efficiency awful; Tremblay's Albertine in Five Times is duff. The actresses do their skilful best to rescue it, but the only cause for celebration is the delightful Bridewell theatre itself.

The Steward of Christendom Until 22 April, Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, London SW1 (0171-730 2544); The Memorandum Until 29 April, Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, Surrey (0181-940 3633); Albertine in Five Times Until 29 April, The Bridewell Theatre, London EC4 (0171936 3456) Dennis Lumborg's One Fine Day is a schematic re-write of Willy Russell's Shirley Valentine for a single bloke, Eddie Edwards, who also starts talking at us for no apparent reason in the kitchen on a Liverpool estate: Whereas Russell's piece was an ode to joyous non-feminist feminism, Lumborg's bleak tale is one of false accusation on child-abuse charges, isolation, decline: 'That fella; those kids; that family'. The subject matter is terrifying, but given totally implausible articulation. No complaints about Joe McGann as Eddie: a winning and charismatic performance. Canadian playwright Joanna McClelland Glass's Iff We Aire Women is just as creaky, chock-full of alliterative lists and litanies and annoyingly self-conscious references to Chekhov and other greats. But it offers good technical acting opportunities to Joan Plowright and Diana Quick (both superb, and very well supported by Sheila Paterson and impressive newcomer Caroline Gatz) as a Jewish mother-in-law and a bereaved writer.

The play -mothers and daughters cross- Irvine Welsh's cult novel Trainspotting is not really for anoraks, though protective clothing might be advisable should you ever find yourself near such Edinburgh low-life desperadoes as permeate its stunningly good pages. Harry Gibson's stage version, brilliantly directed by Ian Browri, arrives at the Bush from the Glasgow Citizens' (where a second version has just packed them in) complete with amazing performances by Ewen Bremner (the shouting lost boy in Mike Leigh's Naked), Susan Vidler (his girlfriend in same), James Cunningham and Malcolm Shields. Whether shooting up or throwing up, these characters burst with life on the edge in their jazzy language of skag-hunting, junkies, heroin addiction, shite-holes, opium suppositories, vein-tapping and metaphysical struggle 'smack makes you feel immortal'-, 'the ultimate challenge is trying to manage a junk problem'. The stories are hilarious, weaving first- and third-person narrative in a heady mix of character-based performance and sheer, rapping intensity. ax Stafford-Clark's production of Sebastian Barry's The Steward of Christendom at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, is lucid and controlled a serge background for a brilliant play.

It is a triumph for Stafford-Clark's new company, Out of Joint. Sebastian Barry writes with lyrical authority. His play is so rooted Irish history that it feels as if it is a classic, although never stale. Thomas Dunne who is based on Barry's great-grandfather was a superintendent in the Dublin Metropolitan Police in 1922, under Michael Collins. Dunne's violent professional loyalty has distorted his family life, and the stress of the pulls on his heart has led him to madness and the asylum in Wicklow in which the play is set.

Dohal McCann as Thomas Dunne is outstanding. He looks like a medieval saint with sad simian features and a mouth that opens to an then freezes in twisted contemplation of the story it tells. He passes his hand over his shaven head, as if checking to see Whether he still exists. This is the portrait of a man racked with shame, moving between elegy and declamation. He finds solace in his memory of nature, bathing his mind in what he calls 'the fled time'; in a world scented with clover, and filled with dragbnflies.

He resembles an Irish King Lear, although, he says, he is every inch a steward. His daughters are carefully differentiated. Cara Kelly's Maud is nervy and vivacious; Tina Kellegher's hump-backed Annie sour but loyal, and Aislm McGuckin's Dolly looks like a fashion-plate of the Twenties with a heart-breaking face: The girls come and go like a chorus. The strength of the play is its kindness. Take the asylum staff: Mrs O'Dea (Maggie McCarthy) for his V-TOL Dance Company.

I can't be sure, for after justhalf-an-hour's playing with reality (live dancers) and illusion (film of dancers doing the same thing) the film snapped: reality supervened and we all trooped out, with the offer of a free drink and a return visit. Laurie Booth's Tango Variations visited Woking before the Dance Umbrella closed last weekend. It was evident from the audience reaction that his choice of title had set up the wrong expectations. Booth and his dancers are not Argentinian experts but contemporary dancers using tango as a code for improvisation: if you put your leg there, I'll put mine really good, but better than average. Last week, I inadvertently attributed the co-production of David Glass's Les Enfhnts du Paradis to Shared Experience instead of the Cambridge Theatre Company.

Mea culpa, and I promise to wear my hand-woven Tony Slattery-approved hair-shirt (with leeches and punitive cummerbund) for the rest of Holy Week. The Devil is an Ass (Swan), Romeo and Juliet (Royal Shakespeare Theatre), both Stratford-upon-Avon (01 789 295623); Ttalnspotting Bush, London W12 (0181-743 3388); One Fine. Day Albery Theatre, London WC2 (0171-369 1 730); Iff We Are Women Greenwich Theatre, London SEIO (0181-858 7755) of perforrners, Kylidn's stylised moves make his cast look soulfully self-conscious. Smok, too, turns to folk steps for his Sinjbniettti (1985), danced to Jandcek's blaringtrumpetcalls. The members of the company seem most fully themselves in this piece, celebrating their sonsc of commonality.

Sonieof the imagery-dancers swaying like bells, for exaniple-is overworked, and the final group effect, arms raised high in hope, is a ballet cliche" (though not yet, perhaps, in Prague). Mark Murphy shows signs of falling into film cliche in his new piece, In the Prlvaoy of My Own, SLOf qdI Hood fo1tufB imsaflDts mi dmM here. Although this is what ballroom dancers go through as they try to forge a partnership, Booth is interested in the moves for their own sake, not in the fusion of two bodies with four legs. The barefoot variations in the second half are fascinating, burns soon as the tango theme returns and the shoes go back on, the dancers look down at their feet- as sure a sign of a tentative beginner as an L-plate. Tango Variations, 23 April, Grand Theatre, Blackpool (01253 28372) In the Privacy of My Own, 22 April, Browhouse Theatre, Taunton (01823283244) Dvofdk's choral music), which came next, also opened with a trio -young women moving in canon, matching the recorded voices.

ButKylirfn, who was born in Prague and has run the Netherlands Dance Theatre for the past 20 years, is too skilled a choreographer to get stuck in a groove. He created the piece during a visit to his native land in 1988, drawing on Czech folk-dances -a familiar motif in his work. The men are manly, the women graceful and lively. There's a sleekness to their dancing that robs them of individuality; unlike Mark Morris's inventive, folk-based choreography for his motley crew linked by their upraised hands. The formal patterns made by the hands as they frame the three faces, reach into the light, or retreat behind their owners' backs, are lovely to look at; but after a while, it becomes only too obvious that the three are inextricably knitted together.

Nobody can break away for long enough to introduce new dance material; where one goes, theother two will surely follow. Strong, simple 'movement ideas lose then-impact through repetition. An eternity passes before the music runs its course and the piece ends, as it was hound to, where it began. Jiri'Kylun'sFut'iiinj Sontas(to.