Berit Kuennecke

This movie is ridiculous.

Based on a stage play from the early 1980s by C P Taylor, it charts the rise of a German literature professor, John Halder, into the upper ranks of the SS.

Halder's novel on euthanasia attracts the attention of senior Nazi officials, and he is asked to write an official document outlining the party's policy, with the strong implication that he is being used to justify increasingly genocidal policies towards the mentally and physically ill.

It's not often that you want to shoot one of the main characters five minutes after they've appeared on stage, but it's an urge that's hard to resist when watching Gaslight.

It's not the actor's fault; Andrew Woodall does a great job playing an unlikable husband in Patrick Hamilton's 1938 thriller. But Woodall's character, Mr Manningham, is the personification of a vile Victorian patriarch whose only purpose in life appears to be to degrade the women in his household - routinely and indiscriminately.

I went to Palestine to work with the theatre company Al-Hara (the neighbourhood) in Beit Jala, Bethlehem. It was during the end of Ramadan, and my first day was spent on the back of a truck, watching the company perform a children's play at eight different locations throughout Bethlehem. These included two refugee camps, one of them with a high proportion of children whose parents have been imprisoned in Israeli jails.

Love, Sex and Cider
by Paul Charlton
Director Marc de Launay
Traverse, Edinburgh

Fringe First Award winning play about four teenagers, set in the 1990s. It follows the 14 year old protagonists through a particularly eventful week.

20-22 January (post-show discussion 20 January)

Box office: 0131 228 1404

I'm a Fool to Want You
by Told by an Idiot
Battersea Arts Centre, London

The hugely enjoyable production of Edward II condenses 23 years of action into just under three hours of stage time, and it successfully conveys Marlowe's vision of the interplay between personal tragedy and historical process.

'A disgusting, crass and degrading broadcast which offended the Catholic faith and the religious sentiment of the Italian people...this is the first time that a national television network has broadcast a programme of such blasphemy.'