critical list The essential weekly guide to the Arts

Jenny Agutter (below) has been cast in Ian Judge's Oxbridge-style RSC production of Love's Labour's Lost. Anyone mesmerised by her cool grasp on adolescence in The Railway Children should hotfoot it to the Barbican before its international tour. A lternatively, stay home and watch her in the BBC dramatisation of Edith Wharton's The Buccaneers beginning on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Stratford opens its doors to a season that includes everything from Return to the Forbidden Planet to a gig on Sunday from comedy cherub Eddie Izzard, part of a 53-date tour.

The concert season begins in earnest with Bernard Haitink conducting the Vienna Philharmonic at the Royal Festival Hall on Thursday. Things Viennese continue at Covent Garden on Saturday with a revival of Der Rosenkavalier boasting a luxury cast of Felicity Lott, Anne Sofie von Otter and Barbara Bonney. Anyone unable to afford a visit should snap up the forthcoming video from Deutsche Grammophon with the same principals.

King Priam is, alas, an opera rather less likely to appear on video. The CD is excellent, but this is an opera which demands to be seen.Opening on Friday for just four performances, Tom Cairns' production for the ENO is the highlight of the Tippett birthday celebrations.

You are unlikely to catch Chaka Khan (above) singing Tippett, but you never know. Her hugely versatile voice is the heart of the London production of the long-running off-Broadway smash Mama I Want to Sing, which opens at the Cambridge Theatre on Wednesday.

Barbican: 0171-638 8891.

RSC Stratford 01789 295623.

Royal Festival Hall: 0171-928 8800. Royal Opera House 0171-3044000

ENO 0171-836 0111

Cambridge Theatre 0171-494 5080.