The Independent from London, Greater London, England • 49

19 INDEPENDENT TABLOID FRIDAY Siblings in arms THEATRE Out Cry Lyric Hammersmith, London 've always suspected that theatres were prisons for players," remarks Claire towards the end of Tennessee Williams' Out Cry. "Finally, yes, and for writers of replies her brother, Felice. They neglect to add that theatres can also seem like prisons to audiences when, as here, you feel as if you've been trapped under the stifling bell-jar of a playwright's subjectivity and that the drama is itself incarcerated in a theatrical metaphor whose exits have all been sealed. The play, which Williams kept revising through the Sixties and early Seventies, has never been performed in England in the version now presented by Timothy Walker for Cheek By Jowl. A two-hander, it is the author's most naked and revealing depiction of his intense emotional bond with his sister, Rose, who stayed suspended in time after her lobotomy while Williams proceeded on a turbulent ride through success, fame, failure and his own mental instabilities.

Quizzed once about the secret of happiness, Williams wittily replied: "Insensitivity, I guess." Out Cry brings home, in more ways than one. the price of too much sensitivity. The piece is set in a theatre where a touring company has been booked to perform. But the rest of the actors have walked out on Felice (Jason Merrells) and Claire (Sara Stewart), temperamental siblings who would certainly test the loyalty of the most dedicated of troupers. The scenery has arrived incomplete; no hotel reservations have been made; they aren't even sure which city they are in.

But, although we may take leave to doubt the existence of the fictional audience we're assured is out there, the couple put on a play called Out Cry, in which they seem to be enacting a suffocating and volatile sibling relationship that overlaps dangerously with their own. (By the pre-arranged signal of her running over to the piano and striking C-sharp, a panicky Claire often insists on cuts.) When the performance grinds to a halt, and they find themselves locked in a freezing theatre, the pair have to retreat for warmth, back into the world of the play, where they climatically confront the incestuous nature of their affinity. Williams had once been capable of creating a Stanley Kowalski as well as a Blanche Dubois and of allowing us to get glimpses of her from Stanley's perspective. In Out Cry, by contrast, the sensitivity, the teetering on the brink of madness, the seeking refuge from hostile reality in theatrical make-believe are accepted, A family affair? Sara Stewart as Claire and Jason Merrells as her brother, Felice Geraint Lewis overwhelmingly, at their own valuation. performances from Jason Merrells, who "Our home is a theatre anywhere that makes a magnetic, sweatily intense Felice, there is one," declares Felice.

It would be enlightening to see this pair in nontheatrical surroundings. As Walker's production demonstrates, this envelopment in artifice creates tricky problems of tone. From one angle, the play-within-the-play comes over like a camp spoof of some ripe piece of Southern Gothic, with Felice and Claire impersonating a brother and sister psychologically trapped in the home where their father may have killed their mother and himself. Despite compelling DANCE Phoenix Dance Company Queen Elizabeth Hall, London to he night my I moment raised approaching I set the foot ayerage in senility the age but of Queen to the those Elizabeth simple present. fact Hall This that on is a not Tuesday large due chunk of Phoenix's audience is still having its teeth straightened.

The company's easy appeal to a new, young audience is a testament not only to its community education work but also to the easy attack and ready wit of its dancers. The company began as a small, all-male outfit in 1981. Since then it has grown to 15 dancers, has performed all over the world, including a visit to the Atlanta Olympics, and has attracted considerable business sponsorship. Anyone new to the company can glean many of these interesting facts from the six-point typography of the ornamental but virtually illegible programme. Phoenix's abiding strength is that for all their polish and athleticism the dancers have an almost aristocratic ease of manner.

Although the company's growth has been exemplary and its intentions are invariably excellent, its choice of repertoire does not always do its dancers justice and one sometimes yearns for the raw power and modest aims of the older five-man configuration. appear larger and more interesting. One by one the muslin drapes are White Picket Fence seeks to explore the darker side of life in middle whisked aside, revealing different layers of reminiscence and fantasy in America. The idea of scratching the slimy underbelly of American the mind of Chantal Donaldson's everywoman. The live suburbia might have had some point when Doris Day was still up and accompaniment is a derivative but pleasant enough little fidget for running, but since those happy sugar-frosted days virtually everything three soprano saxophones by Jason Yarde.

from Peyton Place to Twin Peaks has established the white picket fence The final piece is by former Alwin Nikolais performers Danial as shorthand for unspeakable goings-on. Darshan Singh Bhuller's Shapiro and Joanie Smith and involves a game of musical doormats in piece is for six dancers and uses a mixture of Vivaldi Oboe Concerti which the dancers fight over small squares of patterned carpet. and rap music. I dare say this juxtaposition is intended to symbolise Dressed in Day-glo daywear, they fly through space, pirouette, balance the contradiction between the civilised veneer and the horror beneath and fall with commendable energy and elegance. Warren Adams, who but it sounded very contrived.

Two couples frisk and scamper in a has joined the company as part of their Apprentice Dancer Scheme. Tayloresque fashion on a stretch of astroturf and are joined got to show off his ballon (many, many times). The choreographers periodically by two figures encased in wired, red nylon tubes. Behind claim to be "fascinated by metaphors of trust, loss and co-operation them, four television screens show the eponymous fencing and various balanced with sarcasm and physicality" but this boils down to the bits of wildlife like a bad day at the Radio Rentals showroom. dancers' squabbling over the available carpeting.

The audience The second work is Pamela Johnson's Eve's Reflection. A series seemed to find this hysterical but then they're at a funny age. of gauze curtains compartmentalise the space making the small stage Louise Levene COMEDY Waiting to Inhale Theatre Royal, Stratford East, London any UK without people Independence anaesthetic would rather Party than go read in manifesto the for audience participation. But not at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, where the audience is often the star of the show. The biggest cheers of the night at Waiting to Inhale, Geoff Schumann's comic report from the frontline of the battle of the sexes, were reserved for scene-stealing hecklers.

When Schumann, who conceived this revue show as a response to the femalebonding in films like Waiting to Exhale, was simultaneously ditched by the girlfriends he was two-timing in one sketch, a waggish woman in the audience piped up: "Go and get your P45, then." The whooping and hissing of goodies 8 and from Sara Stewart, whose Claire veers vividly from louche, hard-bitten pro to gasping, paralysed neurotic, the parts where the hokey portentousness is meant as a joke are sometimes hard to keep separate from the poetic, significant bits. Is it possible to view with an entirely straight face the sight of an adult blowing soap bubbles through a hole in his house to symbolise the fragility of beauty and the longing for escape? To 17 May. Booking: 0181-741 2311 Paul Taylor and baddies lent the evening an air of a pantomime but it was all the better for it. You couldn't help but get drawn into the joyously gladiatorial atmosphere. The show ran the risk of being tagged sexist.

In his opening spiel, Schumann, like some over-the-top version of Gary Glitter, urged us to call him "Leader" and warned against a sinister female conspiracy: "Men, we need each other. Our enemies are here. We're always getting kicked." He went on to sound off about the convention that obliges men to pay for an evening with no guarantee of nookie at the end of it. As we prepared for the interval, he advised the males in the audience: "Don't let them pressure you in the bar. If they really are Nineties women, they'll have more than 90 pence.

Let them buy you a But Schumann may have just about managed to ward off the threat of feminist pickets thanks to his end-of-show announcement that "this is my comical story. I don't really hold those views about women. All those women here, give yourselves a round of applause." Also, even his most questionable material was delivered with a winning smile, and potential offensiveness was offset by the fact that many of the jokes were at the expense of the blokes. In one sketch, the girlfriend of the slobbish, selfish Schumann character walked out on him to tremendous cheers and he was left with only a blow-up dolly for company. In another, Schumann invited a woman he fancied out on a date.

As they exited, she muttered in an aside to the audience: "I wonder if I should tell him I used to be a man." Schumann possesses a stage presence as huge as his frame. (He says one of his ambitions is to stop being mistaken for the guy on the front of the Uncle Ben's rice packet.) He has created a vibrant, thoughtprovoking, if occasionally beyond-theknuckle show, well acted by himself, Sandra Bee, Ninia Benjamin, and Wayne Rollins, and neatly staged by Angie Le Mar. People should be queuing up to say: "Take me to your Leader." To 17 May. Booking: 0181-534 0310 James Rampton NOW PREVIEWING BEST PLAY 1996 TONY AWARDS PATTI LuPONE Marta, allas MASTER CLASS BY TERRENCE MCNALLY QUEENS THEATRE SEE CLASSIFIED FOR DETAILS.