Zero Degrees and Drifting -- West Yorkshire Playhouse

The lives and loves of a couple living in a lighthouse are changed forever on the arrival of a mute stranger who is washed ashore.

If you're going to produce a play about love, rule number one -- don't bad-mouth your ever-so popular and more successful peers.

In the programme artistic director Jon Spooner berates Richard Curtis on his 'lazy and nauseous' romantic comedies and claims that Zero Degrees explores on a deeper level the 'abstract emotion' we call love.

That was bad form and affected the whole tone of the play for me.

What we get from Zero Degrees is not a story about love, but a shallow, pretentious effort by a theatre company trying to be clever about love.

The only saving grace was the innovative sub-plots of Chris Thorpe's DJ keeping track of all the missing people in the world and the quest of Elizabeth Besbrobe's curator frantically trying to save her museum as it crumbles into the sea.

They exhibited more emotion and made more sense than anything coming out of the central couple.

Gemma Berry

Time to Kill -- Keighley Playhouse

A difficult and in-depth production was handled well by Playhouse regulars and former familiar faces returning to tread the boards.

The veneer of middle-class respectability is laid bare for the cheating, backstabbing and adulterous world it really is in Leslie Darbon's play.

And the Playhouse performers made a decent stab at conveying the drama of a man put on trial for his life by four women sick of his lying, cheating ways.

On the promise of another notch to his bedpost, Alan (Allan Hollings, pictured) is lured to the home of delectable housewife Maggie (Laura Judge, above).

However, the promise of fun and frolics turns into a nightmare for him as he is bound and put on 'trial' for the murder of a woman he had an affair with.

But all is not as it seems as the play twists and turns to its unexpected ending in a story where ulterior motives are the name of the game.

Hollings attacked the role of milkman-cum-Romeo with convincing relish and the lovely Laura Judge must be praised for a role that included the lion's share of lines.

Julia Roberts as Judge Jane was her usual good value and Laura Campbell as Helen was a bright addition to the ranks.

My only criticism is that the play is something of a slow-burner and slightly repetitious: the most frantic action being saved for the finale.

An enjoyable evening overall though.

l Runs until Saturday, box office: 01535 604764 (evenings).

Stuart Roberts