The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 27

THE WEEK I 7 Saturday December 21 1996 The Guardian be damned What have The Merry Wives Of Windsor and Ibsen's Little Eyolf got in common? Not a lot, thought Michael Billington, until he saw the RSC's two latest productions What would happen if Doctor Finlay and Doctor Cameron swapped jobs with Starsky and Hutch? Both, after all, are stock double-acts with all the mutual fondness and occasional irras-cibility that implies. How would Finlay handle the casual sex and jive-talking with Huggy Bear? How would Starsky deal with Janet's Hogmanay clooty dumpling? But the difficulty of imagining the swap is not just because of cultural differences; it is because of the unbridgeable gap between genres. There is little scope for mavericks in medical dramas; what the public demands from its TV doctors is consummate professionalism, perhaps a disastrous personal life that provides a counterpoint, but a steady hand on the stethoscope, and a bedside manner that involves keeping both feet on the floor. TV detectives have more fun: they are often encouraged to be bed hoppers, to drink too much, detest authority, abandon paperwork and dress up as swingers to nail the bad guys. Doctor Finlay (IT V) was the single malt to Starsky and Hutch's umbrella-filled cocktail, pouring out a seasonal draught of snowbound drama.

It was a snug chamber piece, a foursome trapped indoors with nothing but whisky, roaring Life and Soul HHHHIBHHNIBilMIHilH HHHBHBbIbBBBIBB'P' "Ib BBlBBtBBBBlKBBISaiikiiABIKBtM HHBHIHHOBHHBIIHvQIKPiyHIBH HHfl9BHHHHKHHHgi HilHHIHHIBiHHIHHBsflBvViP'SiHIHHHHB SHMHSrvEElt' toHbIhIh' HIKt lll Noble, whose earlier productions of A Doll's House and The Master Builder revealed an extraordinary understanding of Ibsen, also gets the point here: that the play is dominated by what Ibsen calls "the law of Joanne Pearce's superb Rita moves from a tigerish sexual jealousy through a frantic death-wish towards a form of spiritual rebirth: she is unforgettable in the last act as, with a ghostly pallor, she removes a series of stones from her capacious overcoat pockets as if she planned to mimic her son's watery death before deciding to accept the role of surrogate village mother. Robert Glenister also registers Alfred's transition from self-deceiving idealist to earthbound realist with nervy intensity And there is impeccable support from Derbhle Crotty as the angst-ridden Asta and from Damian Lewis as the practical engineer who offers her the only hope of rational escape. Rob Howell's set, with a fault-line symboli-. cally running through the floor, also suffers internal erosion with each act, as if the characters are reduced to living on the edge of a precipice; which in this vertiginous masterpiece they virtually are. After the shattering emotional intensity of the tormented souls of Norway, The Merry Wives Of Windsor seems quite relaxing.

But Ian Judge, as if to belie his reputation as the RSC's Dr Pangloss, comes up an autumnal, russet-hued production in which the fun is some what fitful. Indeed, he even gives an Ibsenite twist to the climax of the scene where the maniacally jealous Ford ransacks his house in search of his wife's assumed lover. As Edward Petherbridge's crestfallen, obsessive Ford urges his wife to go and make dinner, Susannah York's hitherto sunny, bright-eyed Alice stalks off for all the world as if she is about the slam the door like Nora in A Doll's House. It's so startling a moment that one wishes the idea of a marriage founded on suspicion and mistrust had been allowed to shadow the rest of the comedy. The chief problem with this production is Leslie Phillips's seedy, saloon-bar lecher of a Falstaff.

He lacks weight, which undercuts the whole joke of his being bundled into a buck-basket: even more sig- IBSEN and Shakespeare: unquestionably the greatest of all dramatists. And the RSC fortuitously links them with a double Stratford opening of Little Eyolf at The Swan and The Merry Wives Of Windsor at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre: two plays dealing, from wildly differing perspectives, with marriage, jealousy and guilt. Little Eyolf, written late in Ibsen's life in 1894, is a particularly tough nut: one that Adrian Noble's masterly production cracks with great aplomb. What he grasps is that this sombre, brooding play is essentially about the painful process of resurrection: that only by facing the darkest, bitterest truths about ourselves can we hope to achieve spiritual renewal. As in Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, a child in this case indisputably real is the means of exposing marital guilt.

The impotent idealist, Alfred Allmers, and the fiercely sensual Rita have never recovered from the fact that their son was crippled through their own negligence: as a' baby, he fell off a table while they were making love. And when, later, the nine-year-old Eyolf is lured into the sea by the Rat Wife and drowns, Alfred and Rita are forced into a process of almost Strindbergian soul-stripping. Alfred confronts his passion for his presumed half-sister, Asta: Rita her own devouring jealousy Both also acknowledge that, for all their protestations, "We never really loved Eyolf." That line is greeted in Noble's production by a ruefully ironic laugh from Joanne Pearce's Rita and Robert Glenister's Alfred. It becomes the pivotal moment in the production suggesting the self-excavation that leads ultimately to tentative renewal. "Know thyself" said the ancients; and Ibsen's point is that only after one has dissected one's own life-lies can one hope to change either oneself or the world.

It is a play about learning; and, since it is the heroine who finally proposes to open up the house to the village's impoverished children, it could even be retitled Educating Rita. Bruce Sansom and Miyako Yoshida PHOTOGRAPH: HENRIETTA BUTLER Robert Glenister in Litle Eyolf IN Starsky And Hutch (Bravo) our boys went undercover as two hotel hairdressers, Mr Tyrone and Mr Marlene. This proved very confusing. I always thought they were hairdressers, thanks to the too-carefully blow-dried hair and the absence of split ends. Who but a unisex hairdresser would wear a belted cardigan? Who but the LAPD would employ, these guys as law enforcers? Hutch wore an ill-fitting wig, Starsky sported a French accent that had escaped from a Ferrero Rocher ad.

"With zis accent, Mr Marlene, I will woo ze ladies." "Eccelente!" The accent with which, no doubt, Paul Michael Glaser used as a really irritating party turn. David Soul played Mr Marlene with effete lisps and temperamental head twitches the straight man's burdensome notion of gayness. As if they were threatened by this gay stereotyping, both men went into heterosexual overdrive: Hutch gave the obliging wife in room 1232 more than a shampoo and set; Starsky had a string of blondes hanging on his new-found Gallic charms. Their job? To thwart the master jewel thief known only as the Baron, who was coming to their LA hotel to steal some diamonds. "Who is this baron? What's he look like?" asked Starsky.

"No one knows. No pictures, no prints and no name. Nothing," said Bernie Hamilton's long-suffering Captain, top button undone, already sweating profusely into his shirt 10 minutes in, but otherwise with little to do except be that liberal token, a deskbound black cop with at most three speeches per hour. All that was known of the Baron from the Scotland Yard report was that he smoked Corona Superba cigars. Ah premises, premises.

In the seventies you could get away with this guff: the show ended with Starsky and Hutch seated under blow-driers sucking on a pair of Corona Superbas, presents from the Baron. "Until, the rematch, gentlemen," said the note. Dame Edna, RIP A FUNERAL took place on Radio 2 last week: the last vestiges of Dame Edna Everage's wit were laid to rest. The corpse was a skeletal thing she'd no wit left to speak of for a long time now. But for those of us who can recall weeping over Barry Humphries's creation almost two decades back, listening to Dame Edna 's Aural Experience (Radio 2) was a doleful experience: the great parodist had pupated into those he'd once parodied.

You knew it was going to be bad when the intro was delivered by David Jacobs, with the sort of I'm-in-on-the-joke mock theatricality which was to beset most of the show's guests. Certainly spoof chat shows present celebrities with a problem: do they play sincere and treat them as just another platform on the self-promotion circuit, ignoring the fact that their host's whole persona is a comic ruse? Or, to avoid appearing like a self-absorbed tosser, are they prepared to inflate and distort their carefully-constructed image to match their host's Such are the postmodern dilemmas, and hitherto there was no solution: if you tried to take on Dame Edna she'd surely outwit you, and you'd end by looking an even bigger tosser. But the guests on last week's Dame Edna Christmas show, set on a tropical island, soon cottoned on to a new fact: they were all playing the same game. This Dame Edna was in the schmooze business, and the jokes so feeble they belonged in a cracker. It's not that Edna Healey, Shirley Bassey, Joanna Lumley et al should have been KnHSGHwHlHBSNiHIHViHHBHHKVHHi tjSBSBBSHBBBBBBmvBIBBBBBKM BBbb jJBBBBBk What would happen if Dr Cameron and Dr Finlay swapped jobs with Starsky and Hutch? fires and flickering desire to keep them from madness and board games: the same conceit that some TV programme somewhere plays reassuringly each year.

Finlay was romantically dallying with delectable Dr Napier; Cameron had a small heart attack and recalled his fondness for Janet; Janet wore a well-starched pinafore defiantly throughout the festivities. I've always had a bit of a thing for David Rentoul. Sexier as Darcy than Colin Firth, even now as Finlay he drops his jaw at the end of clauses like Gordon Brown. With Rentoul that's alluring, with the Shadow Chancellor scary. Doctor Finlay had a nice line in sexual coyness.

After the implausible Boy's Own moral cesspit of Starsky And Hutch, the restraint of Tannochbrae was oddly touching. Finlay offered Dr Napier his bed, and waited for her reaction, before adding that he, of course, would take the sofa. "No offence," replied Dr Napier. "I'd feel strange penetrating the bachelor fastness of Arden House in quite so blatant a manner." Did someone say Janet cover your ears! abused in the name of comedy, but this was lazy, barb-free, feelgood humour which the guests could comfortably play along with since it sanctioned more or less the same quantities of amour propre as any traditional chat-show, to the extent of allowing Jeffrey Archer to chum up to the Dame and, yes, archly talk about his royal succession bill in Edna-ese. Ugh.

Though Humphries dropped his "possums" stuff, he still used "spooky" whenever he couldn't think of anything amusing to say, which was often. Fantasy and brutal honesty had evanesced, replaced by a Woolworth camp, no longer comic and continents away from real camp. As a joke on fame and vanity, Dame Edna was long ago supplanted by Alan Partridge, and Steve Coogan knew better than to let him return each year like the Christmas panto. In his early theatre performances, Humphries achieved a superb poignant tone as a ghost. This might have been developed into something remarkable, had he strangled the constricting Dame a good six years ago; instead Humphries has allowed her turn into Danny La Rue.

Spooky. Radio 5 Live served up a right slice of balderdash on Wednesday morning, when The Magazine discussed "evolutionary The occasion was the publication of a new Demos report which, at least in the version proffered here, purported to explain everything from why so many step-parents abuse their stepchildren to why most of us are going to pig out over Christmas by recourse to Darwinian explanations. Journalists adore finding biological theories to explain stereotypes and confirm prejudices (after the criminal gene and the gay gene, are we to have a step-parent gene and a -Christmas pudding one but this was media science at its shoddiest. Against a background of the kind of music better suited to a beachwear fashion show, there came an absurd succession of "studies show" and "according to research" snippets. In the discussion which followed, only Paul Barker sounded the necessary note of scepticism, while presenter Diana Madill, so competent over issues like Dunblane, seemed completely out of her depth and didn't steer the discussion, but kept returning it to unexamined truisms like free will.

On this hearing, evolutionary psychology appeared to be a close relative that other great branch of psychology pop. Fairy entertaining Judith Mackrell has a ball at the Royal Ballet's production of Cinderella Guilt edged Joanne Pearce and nificantly he lacks any aura of depleted aristocracy so that his final exclusion from this smug, middle-class Eden goes for little. But there is a priceless supporting performance from Guy Henry as Dr Caius which goes beyond the PHOTOGRAPH: BILL COOPER British dancing at its peak. At its centre was Miyako Yoshida, making her debut as Cinderella. During the first act, her natural modesty combined with everyone else's bustle kept her slightly in the background.

But in Act II her dancing powered into brilliance and grandeur. Picking her way through Ashton's footwork with catlike delicacy and speed, she showed you every sharp accent and every gracious curve with wonderful clarity Bruce Sansom, always an elegant Prince, partnered her handsomely, Bowie at 50 special. Both you and TV have moved on since you last did it 25 years ago, Mr Yentob. Then there's Michael Wearing, head of BBC drama serials (Boys From The Blackstuff to Pride And Prejudice). Is he quietly fulfilled in his job? Possibly.

But not enough to prevent him from guest-appearing in Joseph Conrad's Nostronio, as a mine-owner. (He won't be away from his desk long, Mr Birt, he's axed to death after three minutes.) There's a suggestion of masque-ing about all this. Not as in wearing masks. Fellows couldn't be bolder about it, you should see the press releases. No, the masque was the preferred entertainment genre at the court of James the vainest king in our history With Elizabethan and early Jacobean plays, Windsor marriages but that lacks a Falstaff of the right spiritual, as well as physical, fatness: after Little Eyolf, one craves a Big Jack.

Little Eyolf and The Merry Wives Of Windsor are in rep at Stratford (01789-295623). Garth Cartwright on 'the world's second best band', No Way Sis Zombie karaoke THE Oasis phenomenon keeps rolling: on Thursday you could hear Wonderwall playing Oasis songs live in Greater London Radio's morning session then head to the Empire in the evening to see No Way Sis do their take on the Manchester superstars. At your local pub there may have been Noasls, Quoasis or Oasisn't doing a similar turn. If ever there is to be a remake of The Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, it could centre on groups of lank-haired, lantern-jawed young men suddenly sighted on stages throughout the country. No Way Sis, only a year old, have reached a level of popularity that sees them managing to headline the Empire two nights running and secure a five-album contract with EMI.

It is a first for any tribute band. With Noel and Liam's stamp of approval, the brothers Gallagher having called them the second-best band in the the Sis collective must feel blessed. Live, the Glaswegian band make a passable Oasis, with the audience relishing note-perfect readings of Supersonic and Hello. Joe McKay captures Noel's chunky guitar flavour while his brother, Jerry, does a fine turn as Liam. Yet there is no real spark, and their absolute mimicry of Oasis's sullen stage presence suggests a karaoke crew.

A plodding Live Forever demon strates a marked lack of dynamics. Playing no original material they encored with their debut single, I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing. The joke is that The New Seekers sued Oasis' for stealing the melody from their anaemic anthem. Unfortunately, that is as funny as the Sis get. Where the Abba tribute band Bjorn Again possess a cel ebratory sense of camp, No Way Sis are an irony-free zone, mese wannabes fail to observe how derivative and dumb Oasis often are.

Watching them is to be a wit ness to rock music at its most anally absurd. The audience ana tne Dana are both aware that this is at once homage and pantomime, but No Way Sis tail to piay it ior laugns. Yes, they look like Oasis and sound like Oasis but No Way Sis are, finally, The Rutles without the punch-line. So why does Noel Gallagher continue to push the Sis? I imagine that, with Oasis only playing occasional stadium gigs, the riff bandit enjoys knowing his songs are being thrashed out every night. Bigger than The Beatles and damn near impossible to escape, Oasis have set the pod people among us, Europhobic, funny-foreigner joke to present us with a man of insatiable curiosity about the language that he so constantly mishandles.

He is the brightest feature of a goodish production that intrigu-ingly hints at the Ibsenite nature of and in Act III the couple's look of enraptured recognition would have stopped even a cynic's heart. But everyone else appeared to be having a ball too, dancing with a confidence that came from know ing exactly what they were doing and why. (it revealing just how good the Royal can be when, as in this ballet, they are properly rehearsed.) Detail after detail in the choreography emerged as if freshly dusted. Muriel Valtat's Godmother wove chicly poised magic with her arms while her lour Fairies evoked the colours of their differ ent seasons with vivid accuracy Sarah Wildor's Spring was so fiercely lush that her tiny body seemed barely able to contain the choreography's force. Tetsuya Kumakawa was at his party best as the leaping spinning Jester, but he kept his performing ego within decent bounds, as did Ashley Page and Ian Webb, who were very funny but not too rampant as the Ugly Sisters.

There was real observation, real acting in their performances that made them far more than a couple of guys in skirts. But all through the evening you wanted to hang onto the tiniest roles, like Phillip Mosley's wickedly sardonic dancing master and Peter Abegglen as the Napoleon lookalike comic suitor. With his body corkscrewed into stiff, lascivious angles and his eyes gleaming beadily out of a doughy face, Abegglen came over as a cross between Toad of Toad Hall and a convicted sex criminal. His improvised stage business with a dropped necklace, which he handled like some erotic fetish, was so brilliantly creepy that even the Sisters drew back in distaste. Though Abegglen was often tucked discreetly away between other dancers, his performance was so abominably enjoyable that I was desolate when he left the stage.

Cinderella is in rep at the Royal Opera House until January 4 (01 71 -304 4000). the audience had to listen to all these words spoken by nobodies professional actors who got to love, die and be admired for four hours. The maximum visibility the audience could achieve, by contrast, was to sit by the stage, flaunting their clothes and persons. Enter the masque. Plot: vestigial.

Lines: irrelevant you could hire real actors, singers and musicians for the real work, like learning or, God, rehearsing. Sets and spectacle: extremely expensive. Costumes: splendiferous. That was the point. Everyone could wear wigs and show off their legs, pretend to the excitement of showbiz.

Why sponsor a dreary group of actor men, when you, or someone you fancied, could waft down on a cloud displaying a bare bosom? The masque did for the English drama for 60 years: out. with King Lear (no guest spot dance-ons), in with Samuel Daniel's Tethy's Festival. Total tosh, of course. Not a word worth remembering. But no doubt-like Lord Gowrie everybody looked great in the photos.

THE really charming thing about Frederick Ashton's Cinderella is that everyone gets to the ball the Fairy God- tnnthpi- nnri hpr attendants, the jester, the hairdresser, the Prince's friends ana even tne ugly sisters are all given steps of surprisingly equal beauty and wit. In fact the 1948 ballet, choreographed to Prokofiev's classic score, is a perfect company showcase depending not only on pol as the Prince and Cinderella ished solos but on a kind of comic democracy, where everyone onstage has to connect with everyone else. During the funny scenes, the jokes are lobbed around the entire cast and the romance of the lovers' final embrace is clinched by the expression of wonder on the onlookers faces, and by the silent howls of anguish from the Ugly Sisters. The work is British ballet at its best at least to those of us brought up on pantomime and theatrical realism. And in Wednesday night's performance it was also ing director can't fill it before shooting starts Tuesday But that doesn't excuse Alan Yentob, BBC director of programmes, from casting himself as interviewer in BBC2's David 30HNBIRT IS MAKING A 1 XOH-SCfiEen APPEARANCE I The powers that be are no longer content with power alone, says Vera Rule Vanity, vanity, all is vanity ICE little cameo, the part of Ruthven the Highland Vam-pyre, in a late Georgian melodrama shown in Christopher Frayling's biting history of Count Dracula on BBC1 this week.

And who was under Ruthven's period slap? Not a thesplan, but the second earl of Gowrie current chairman of the Arts Council. Have you noticed how many entertainment executives now want to perform? It's as if the reason for having power over the camera is so that you can locate yourself in front of it We're not complaining if an ex-actor succumbs to exhibition ism. We accept it's convenient to charm an assistant director into a mini-role as a weirdo when the cast-.