I'm pleased to recommend a show that gets better as it goes along, unlike the one I saw last week at The Duke of York's. In my view this is a witty well-acted musical about the life and works of Dickens by five talented Americans.

The numbers are mainly country-and-western-ballad-based with a an admix of revivalist songs. It fitted the subject matter well, I thought higlight the themes of maltreated children and depressed women

The troupe is called the Reduced Shakespeare Company, but surely can't be the same people I saw in the seventies doing 'The Abridged Version of the Bible', one of the funniest shows I've seen. The current show is not quite so good as that but better than 'The Complete Works of Shakespeare' , which I saw about ten years ago. Maybe Shakespeare isn't so easily caricatured.

It made me laugh and cry; what more can one want? My companion the Dickens enthusiast said it was 'Tremendous'. The young woman on the other side said she was a bit bored in places. She had an Eastern European accent so I doubt she was a Dickens fan.

It seemed well received by a mixed-age audience, and two people at the front were giving it a standing ovation, but they could have been related to the actors for all I know.

The £3 programme is good value with a potted history of the theatre and a Dickens biography as well as history of stage and film adaptations of the works.

Another reason to see it is because it's about a writer. He died of a stroke brought on by acting out the death Nancy so many times. He was half way through Edwin Drood at the time.

Just read another great review in the Sunday Paper - might try to get to this Sheila.

You do a lot of theatre!

Sarah, that's true. I didn't used to go so often, or hardly at all, but I was appointed i/c of play reveiwing for a website last year. They promised to pay me and a couple of others are the end of the year when we'd built up the website but it didin't materialise. I was disillusioned and gave up for a while but I had built up some relationships with local theatres and overall I'd rather see plays than not.

I get press tickets for fringe productions in exchange for reviews. For West End plays complimentaries become available through a friend of somebody who works for the Ambassadors group. Strangely enough, I can get press tickets for RSC productions, which are usually expensive, but I think they have a generous press allocation as are heavily subsidised. I think I'll get to see David Tennant as Hamlet, which should be funny.

When I was at Goldsmiths in the 1970s I saw a lot of plays. We could get cheap seats in any productions that were 'relevant' and claim a refund at the end of each term. Looking back, it hardly seems possible.

Tomorrow I'm going to see a production of my choosing, for a change - 'The Peony Pavilion' at Sadler's Wells. I went to a free talk at SOAS and there was a promotion code on the hand-out so I managed to get a £45 ticket for £15. It's a bit beyond my budget, even so.

I'm also going to see a play at the Etcetera theatre on Wednesday, by a Chinese Author I'll write a review of that for Dimsum, a UK/Chinese website - again, no pay.

I'm about to start writing about 'The Good Soul of Szechuan' at the Old Vic. I like Brecht and I thought the production pulled out all the stops but that the interpretation was adapted too much to suit the lead. However, I 'll know more when I've written it.

By the way, how did you get a Russian publisher, but not an English one, for your book?

Sheila

Oh, it's so crazy isn't it - I mean to have a Russian Publisher before anything else - maybe instead ever of anything else! Basically, the agent I have uses scouts and when they were over for last year's London Bookfair they picked up the ms and were certain they could sell it in Russia - which they did straight away.

A reason it's not been submitted elsewhere is because I became obsessed with changing the structure and broadening the themes of the novel - so I spent most of last year rewriting it. They have the new version now - have had it for some time, but I've no idea what's going to happen, if anything. They may decide they prefer the original. If so, I wasted a year of my life, but never mind - I had some fun.

Sarahx

<Added>

PS Don't you find that the squeaky chairs at the Old Vic impinge of the performance!