The Merry Widow, English National Opera, London Coliseum,
	2:41pm Wed 7 May 08
	The arrival in Paris of rich widow Hanna Glawari sets the cat among the diplomatic pigeons at the Pontevedrian embassy, as they try to prevent her - and her F20m fortune - falling into French hands. Cue shenanigans in sheds, ethnic dancing, the taking off of trousers and the losing of fans.

	A Doll's House, Oxford Playhouse
	2:38pm Wed 7 May 08
	One of the more downbeat entries in the theatrical canon, A Doll's House is nevertheless a perfect slice of Scandinavian miserablism. It focuses on a young housewife, Nora Helmer (Tilly Gaunt), who seems to be having her cake and eating it for all to see. Indeed, she has a doting husband, three wonderful children and a large house. However it soon emerges that the cheerfulness she aggressively parades around her guests is a façade, and she is desperately unhappy and growing ever more mentally imbalanced. Her personal scales of sanity threaten to tip right over when a secret she has been hiding from her husband for several years comes back to haunt her.

Local Landscapes: West Ox Arts Gallery

2:31pm Wednesday 7th May 2008

Welcome Ken Messer to Artweeks with his peaceful rural and architectural scenes. First an accountant, then an airline steward, he become an artist. Self taught, he was spotted by Ruskin Spear, won a £10 painting competition run by the Daily Telegraph and never looked back. A superb craftsman, his streams and paths lead the eye beneath filigree of leafless branches into the countryside. His watercolour of Radcot Bridge reflects the oldest bridge over the River Thames, while his Oxford buildings, empty of cars and people, evoke the beauty of colleges like Hertford Bridge. From a high viewpoint, his Dreaming Spires, with the Radcliffe Camera, the Sheldonian Theatre and the Clarendon Building, capture the essence of this beautiful city.

Preview of The Soldier\s Tale, various venues

2:29pm Wednesday 7th May 2008

The moral of The Soldier's Tale, by Igor Stravinsky, libretto by C.F.Ramuz, is as hard-hitting now as it was when first performed in 1918. Essentially this tale informs us that no one can have it all, which in today's world of financial greed is particularly relevant.

	French and Saunders, New Theatre, Oxford
	2:27pm Wed 7 May 08
	No one needs to be told who Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders are. They have, as Dawn told us at one point, been performing together for 30 years and have had huge successes on television both separately and together. The Vicar of Dibley and Absolutely Fabulous were classics, and over the years, their returning series French and Saunders was often genuinely funny.

Birmingham Royal Ballet, Cheltenham

2:25pm Wednesday 7th May 2008

Here is a triple bill that demonstrates the emotional versatility of this terrific company. It ranges from the anguish of Ashton's Dante Sonata to the heights of camp hilarity in Kenneth MacMillan's Elite Syncopations, with a cool abstract work by the promising young choreographer Kit Holder sandwiched between them.

	The Taming of the Shrew, RSC, Stratford-upon-Avon
	2:21pm Wed 7 May 08
	After a staid and notably gimmick-free production of The Merchant of Venice at Stratford, the same players offer us, by contrast, a Taming of the Shrew whose rollicking tone borders on the excessive. The slapstick approach keeps us smiling throughout - not something that happens often with this play - but at times the relentless playing for laughs becomes a trifle wearisome.

	London Lights
	11:59am Thu 1 May 08
	'Music was shaken to its roots in June," writes James Hamilton in his book London Lights, "When the Italian violinist Nicoḷ Paganini gave a series of performances at the King's Theatre, for which he initially demanded £4,000 a show." Even now, this is quite a hefty fee, but in the summer of 1831, it was a fortune.

Local author

11:57am Thursday 1st May 2008

James Conan is the pen-name for a collaboration between Duncton Chronicles creator William Horwood and historian Helen Rappaport, whose novel City of Dark Hearts (Arrow, £6.99) is set in 1890s Chicago.

Book events

11:55am Thursday 1st May 2008

TODAY Lecture: James Attlee talks about his book about Cowley Road, Isolarion: A Different Oxford Journey. 2.30pm, Holywell Music Room, Holywell Street, Oxford. Part of Oxford May Music Festival. For details, see www.oxfordmaymusic.co.uk or call 01865 305305.

Paperback choice

11:53am Thursday 1st May 2008

Notes From an Exhibition Patrick Gale (Harper Perennial, £7.99) The central figure in this family saga with a gay touch is bipolar (manic-depressive) artist Rachel Kelly, who has just died of a heart attack in her Cornish loft-studio. Each chapter is headed by notes from a posthumous retrospective of Rachel's work. We follow her meeting in Oxford with gentle, patient Quaker husband Antony Middleton, who rescued her when she was pregnant and suicidal. He learned never to ask about her family, whom he never met in more than 30 years of marriage. The story unravels gradually, told from the point of view of each of her four children, including gay Hedley and youngest son Petroc, whose death in a road accident at the age of 15 has marked the family almost as deeply as the experience of their wild, unpredictable mother - sometimes loving, sometimes viciously unkind.

Rehash won't satisfy fans

11:48am Thursday 1st May 2008

FOR YOUR EYES ONLY: IAN FLEMING + JAMES BOND Ben MacIntyre (Bloomsbury, £20)I feel for Ben MacIntyre with this latest attempt to chronicle and analyse the similarities and relationship between Ian Fleming and James Bond. It's not that MacIntyre, with this officially endorsed effort to accompany the current exhibition at the Imperial War Museum to commemorate the centenary of the Oxfordshire author's birth, does a particularly bad job.

Self-sufficient eco-twins

11:36am Thursday 1st May 2008

A degree course in nutrition and food science at Oxford Brookes University sparked Dave Hamilton's interest in cooking and growing food. Now 33, he and his twin brother Andy remember making nettle soup with their grandmother, who made pickles, chutney and jam.

Italy's descent into civil war

11:31am Thursday 1st May 2008

by Laura Wurzel ITALY'S SORROW: A YEAR OF WAR, 1944-45 James Holland (Harper Press, £25)Holland's book is a enthralling, detailed, exhaustively researched page-turner. He uses over 50 illuminating eyewitness accounts from Italian civilians and partisans, plus military personnel from both Germany and the Allied forces, to trace Italy's entry into the Second World War and descent into civil war.

	Moon dance
	10:29am Thu 1 May 08
	DAVID BELLAN talks to Lin Hwai-min, founder of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, about performing Moon Water Lin Hwai-min, Cloud Gate's now legendary founder, came late to contemporary dance after studying Chinese opera movement and classical court dance in Japan and Korea.

	To Be Straight With You, DV8, The Oxford Playhouse
	10:23am Thu 1 May 08
	Had your critic arrived a minute or two late at the Oxford Playhouse on Wednesday night, this space would now contain something other than a review of DV8's powerful new show, To Be Straight With You. Were I to have been caught short during the 80 minutes of interval-less performance, the review would have concerned only a partially seen production, for there would have been "unfortunately" - the word of the company's announcer - no readmission. But the risk of a strained bladder had, admittedly, been lessened by another DV8 ukase that had denied me (and any other thirsty patrons) a drink at the bar in the five minutes before the show began.

	Of fires, replicas and choristers in May
	10:12am Thu 1 May 08
	Magdalen College is not the only place where choristers have been heard on May morning, writes CHRIS KOENIG Anyone concerned about the fairness or otherwise of tax bands should perhaps spare a thought for the inhabitants of Churchill, near Chipping Norton - their village was burned to a cinder as a result of an ill-fated tax avoidance scheme.

	For beetles it's brutal
	10:08am Thu 1 May 08
	VAL BOURNE says there can only be one way to deal with the menace of the lily beetle Gardeners hate bright-red lily beetles and I am constantly being asked how to deal with them in a green way. There's only one method and it's brutal - pick the conspicuous creatures off and kill them. But there's a problem.

	'Good shoes and a hat' style
	10:00am Thu 1 May 08
	DENISE DANE, of Oxfordshire Geology Trust's Diversity in Stone project, explores the local links between buildings and North Wessex Downs geology The North Wessex Downs form the largest designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in southern England, a broad expanse of chalk upland through South Oxfordshire, West Berkshire, Wiltshire and North Hampshire.

	Music teacher who added another string to her bow
	9:54am Thu 1 May 08
	As the East Oxford Community Choir prepares for a joint concert with a choir from Grenoble, NICOLA LISLE talks to the choir's founder, Mel Houldershaw The phrase "glutton for punishment" springs to mind. Not content with teaching music to children and forming a children's choir that developed into an adult choir, Mel Houldershaw has, since 2001, been involved in putting on bi-annual concerts with vocal ensemble Interlude, from Grenoble, France. Chatting to her over a cup of coffee, it's clear she positively revels in all this activity.

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