Shakespeare’s green-eyed monster, jealousy, raises its ugly head again in The Winter’s Tale. Its destructive power is a gift for an actor, enabling him to work through his whole repertoire of emotions and techniques, ranging from initial bonhomie to suspicion, to anger, to revenge and finally to regret. There is a lot of meat there into which the able thespian can sink his teeth . . . a satisfying and entertaining, if not exciting or original, production

The story starts on the final day of the First World War and then, in leaps of approximately ten years, takes us into the late fifties. The tale encompasses all the trials and tribulations facing ex-soldiers in a land fit for heroes – the difficulty in finding gainful employment, adjusting to civilian life and so on, all issues we are familiar with today. But also the good, positive things like the creation of the Welfare State after WW2 .

Brave New World, although dealing with similar themes to 1984, was sensible enough not to identify itself in a time period so specific as to make watching a play about what we all know didn’t happen thirty years ago a bit daft (à la 2001 – A Space Odyssey). The world depicted in the story is one where people are created in laboratories to fulfil certain tasks – top of the pile are the Alphas (no, not cars) and at the bottom are the Epsilons who are created without a sense of smell so they can work in the sewers.