The Observer from London, Greater London, England • 78

10 Arts the Observer Michael Coveney Physical misfits and physical jerks PETER BROOK'S The Man Who (this week and next, Newcastle Playhouse) is 'a theatrical research' inspired by Oliver -B neuroloeical case Five finger exercise: Sotigui Kouyate and Toshi Oida in The Man Who', directed by Peter Brook A rose is not a recognisable rose until a man pricks his fingers on the stem. A red glove is held up. What is it? 'A sort of What does it contain? 'It contains its contents' (Quite so). The man puts it on: 'Of course, it is a glove. A red Taking nothing for granted is a good plan for an artist and an even better one for the rest of us.

The way you look at things is always more interesting than the extant properties of the things themselves. This poetic truth is at the root of Brook's show which, for all its simplicity, is impregnated with a spirit of agitated inquiry and acted in the same way. Iteration, disconnected thought, random precision, inexplicable movement: the tall, willowy Sotigui Kouyate (Brook's unforgettable last Prospero) and the tiny, compact David Bennent (his ditto Caliban) seem, in their contrasting ways, to be reconsidering the very process of putting foot on a stage. The latter finally concentrates on walking, and we marvel at how we do it without thinking: 'Every day is a mental Yoshi Oida shaves on one side of his face and is terrified of his own left leg, or tyrannised by the musical memories he-doe s-not-want to lose. In Sacks, you learn about right and book studies, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat (1985).

Does a series of disconnected fables constitute a theatrical entertainment? Is Tales from the Arabian Nights a good book? In the everyday theatre we take actors' presence for granted. In The Man Who, dysfunctional medical patients re-define their movement unprogrammed by the usual instructions from the brain. The miracle of movement is quietly reasserted. The professor who mistakes his student for a hat-stand is a comical buffer. But the man who is instructed to make a sentence using the words 'heap and 'crowd' and comes up with 'A heap is a badly made crowd' is a natural wit.

On a beige square stage, four actors play doctors and patients in stark, laboratory conditions. An Iranian musician, Mahmoud Tabrizi-Zadeh, beautifully underpins moods of melancholy, bewilderment-and-joy-on-his-array of traditional instruments. left and different sides of the brain. In the theatre, you accept and glory in the phenomenon as you would a limp or a stutter. And Bruce Myers 'performs' the tics of a man stricken with Tourette's syndrome, an involuntary profusion of extravagant grimaces and jerks, ruefully remarking that he can never go to an auction.

The whole catalogue of physical aberrations, so gracefully rendered, seems indicative of the secret imaginative life, of a way at looking at the world that may be preferable, and indeed richer, than our own. Thirty years ago, Brook's RSC MaratlSade brilliantly conveyed the madness of asylum-inmates-as-part- of a greats epic production: the study of 'madness' in Tpofi Basra on Mioiem Alelcnem Stories By Special Permission of Arnold Perl Brook's theatre today is part of his investigation into the physiology of acting, the projection of 'normal' human behaviour on a stage, and the wellspring of theatre itself. Will that do as 'a show'? If not, will Hot Shoe Shuffle (Queen's Theatre)? In this hyperactive tap-dancing Australian musical, director (and lead dancer) David Atkins uses movement with the indiscriminate wildness of a jujitsu jackass. The evening is not so much one of escapist entertainment as of depressing asininity. An ill-considered and badly arranged compilation of Forties big band items by Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, George Gershwin and Irving Berlin, masquerades as a musical of charmless vitality in which tap-dancing, performed with manic stupidity from start to finish, becomes as interesting as brushing your teeth or changing a plug.

It is as though the art of Astaire and Rogers and the Nicholas Brothers has been hijacked by a middle-management trainee course in tap-dancing as aversion therapy. Seven brothers (no seven brides, nudge nudge) have to re-create an old vaudeville routine in 1948 in order to lay hands on their dead dad's dosh. They are hindered, then helped, in this by Rhonda Burchmore, an elasticated Lynn Redgrave whose proven musical talents are convincingly disguised by an appalling, ear-scrapingly amateurish amplification system. Burchmore is a missing sister who sings the blues but has obviously forsaken Five funky Guys Named Moe for these Seven sad Guys Named Bruce. As a long lost (we never know why) twin of pocket dynamo Mr Atkins (Oz's butch answer to Wayne Sleep; he sweats up a dance, rather than the other way round), she plays a sort of gawky Schwarzenegger to his Danny DeVito.

The gags are restricted to Atkins poking his eye out on various obstrusive landmarks on the Burchmore anatomy. The second act is 'The Act' but where does it happen, who is presenting it, why are they hogging the whole show? The 13-piece band, amplification still vile, materialises in white tuxedos alongside the inevitably illuminated staircase. This takes you back to something like Happy as a Sandbag all those years ago and makes you wish that you'd stayed there. There were three consecutive feminist British plays by male playwrights in the 1 890s which Shaw often cited as following Ibsen's breakthrough: Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan, Pine-ro's The Second Mrs Tanqueray and Henry Arthur Jones's The Case of Rebellious Susan (1894). The las, completely forgotten, has been enjoy-ably, and illuminatingly, revived by director Auriol Smith at the Orange Tree, Richmond.

Lady Susan Harabin has discovered her husband's adultery. Instead of settling down to dinner, and accepting that there is no sauce for the gander (a man's adultery was not acceptable in the divorce courts) she walks out the house in search of her own romance. She finds it in Cairo. Although Susan is disappointingly reconciled with Sir James (Philip York) two years later, she has belatedly acquired 'a past', some secret life of her own, and the sort of serenity that only comes from showing your strength -and acquiring new dignity. Sarah-Jane Fenton conveys this transition with sincerity and aplombl But the play belongs to Sir Richard Kato QC, the bachelordivoree-lawyer who combines two functional characters in Victorian salon melodrama, the manipulating plot catalyst and the philosophical raisonneur.

Malcolm Sinclair gives a wonderful performance of polish, bite, constructive compromise and inflammatory moral passion. Paul Merton (Palladium, one more week) is a revelation. The droll TV funnyman turns out to be an ironic vaudeville trouper straight out of the top drawer. His show is a blissfully hilarious sequence of sketches, monologues, an extended, brilliant cod pantomime and surreal verbal exchanges, with a dark vein of tasteless black humour. Supported by Lee Simpson and Richard Vranch, Merton.

presents a mystery man who knows nothing; an invisible poodle act; Torvill and Dean facing the music (Merton as plain, disinterested Jane, cruising sulkily on a revolve with a sofa, a snooker table and finally Chris's coffin); and a posse of hand-bunhies flying past in formation to the Dambusters music. A real treat. Choices The Hairy Ape (Bristol Old Vic, 0272 250250). O'Neill's expressionist sea play deserves the fresh treatment promised here. Opens Thurs.

What Every Woman Knows (Watermill, Newbury, 0635 46044). Barrie's political comedy in idyllic country setting. Opens Tues. Frank Pig Says Hello (Library, Manchester, 061 236 7110). Inventive, brilliantly performed two-hander based on Pat McCabe's novel.

Tues to Sat. Ghosts (Pit, Barbican, 071 638 8891). Unmissable Katie Mitchell RSC revival with Jane Lapotaire and Simon Russell Beale. Opens Thurs for straight three-week runi then in rep. Fascinating Aida (Lyric, Hammersmith, 081 741231 1).

Start of new tour after five-year break, with newcomer Issy van Rand wyck joining Dillie Keane and husky-voiced sex-change Adele Anderson. The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol (Riverside Studios, 081-748 3354). Complicite's last two weeks. JOSEPH STEIN SHELDON HARDNICK fi'tf FOLLOWED BY EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENTS AT 5th Sept 24th Sept EDINBURGH PLAYHOUSE 031 557 2590 26th Sept 15th Oct BRISTOL HIPPODROME 0272 299444 24 Oct -12 Nov SUNDERLAND EMPIRE 091 514 2517 15th Nov -26th Nov MANCHESTER PALACE 061Z42 2503.