Greeny News

With very short runs of shows at festivals, such as Lift and Greenwich and Docklands, there will be few theatre reviews in the nationals â€" so tell us what you're watching

It 's not as busy as last week, but there is still much to enjoy around the country this week, so let me know what you see and please link to your blog, if you have one. Very short periods of time shows at festivals such as London International Festival of Theatre (Lift) and the Greenwich and Docklands festival mean that there will be few reviews in the national papers, so bloggers will be providing an invaluable service for all of us.

Life Streaming, also part of the National's Watch This Space, is the only show I've managed to catch in Lift to date and, like much of the work at the festival this year, it challenges how theatre is created and consumed. Some of the issues around that will be under discussion at the ICA next Thursday afternoon when I'm chairing a debate, The Epic and the Intimate, With speakers Adrian Howells BAC 'David Jubb and Dries Verhoeven, who asked whether the theater for one person may be just as powerful as communal experience. I 'm in Warwick tomorrow Fierce festival with Interrobang at Warwick Arts Centre, which includes Hide and Seek's International Sandpit of social games, which operate at the point where life, theatre and play meet.

Elsewhere, there's Charley's Aunt opening in Manchester, Mark Rees's For Mountain, Sea and Sand at Barmouth, Othello at Ludlow and President George Washington's favourite play, The Poor Soldier, at the Theatre Royal in Bury St Edmunds. The big musical opening is Paul Kerryson's revival of 42nd Street at Chichester, but smart theatregoers may want to take a look at the Sondheim revival, Assassins, at the Union. It's your last chance for the fine revival of The Hired Man in Bolton. I'm going to catch up with Mick Gordon's The Tempest, which is in Greenwich Observatory Gardens next week as part of a tour.

In Glasgow, the Arches' New Works, New Worlds includes Tam Dean Burn's look at race in Scottish history, The Black and White Minstrel Show, Richard DeDomenici's Over Your Head and pieces from Jodie Wilkinson, Nick Anderson and Rosanna Cade, graduates of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama's increasingly influential CPP course. Company of Angels and Northern Stage's terrific Apples stops off at Bristol Old Vic and at Harrogate Theatre.

Alice continues at Sheffield, where Polly Stenham's That Face, in a production by Richard Wilson, gets its English regional premiere. Hay Fever at West Yorkshire Playhouse is definitely worth it for Maggie Steed, and Fugard's Road to Mecca at the Arcola, although way over-long, is definitely worth it for Linda Bassett as Miss Helen, the woman who knows that light is the miracle that we can all make happen in our lives. Eastern Angles presents Bentwater Roads at the old USAF airfield at Bentwaters near Woodbridge in Suffolk. And Winchester Hat Fair, an annual spot of joy in the theatrical calendar, starts on Friday, with the main street-arts activity taking place over next weekend.

Have a great weekend and tell me about the things I've forgotten or you think rate a mention â€" and keep posting those reviews and links to blogs.