Preview: Eye lights

Over three hundred years after its first performance in Mexico City, Gaynor Macfarlane directs Peter Oswald's verse translation of Juana Ines de la Cruz's comic classic, The House of Desires.

Its intricate plot of amorous misdoings - involving three men and two women, each of whom seems to have designs on each other - is all the more remarkable given the day job of its author - Sor Juana was a nun.

To 21 Dec pounds 8 (concs pounds 6), pay what you can Tuesdays, BAC, Lavender Hill, Battersea, London SW11 0171-223 2223.

Working under the name Twin Gabriel, Berlin based artists Else Gabriel and Ullf Wrede bring their biological installation exhibition "Floating floccinaucinihilpilification" to the South London Gallery.

Science is given the conceptualist treatment with Planktonbassins, for instance; a cultural breeding ground from an aquarium which evolves as the animal plankton develop to consume the vegetable plankton with which they share the tank.

To 18 Jan 1998, 65 Peckham Road, London SE5 8UH; 0171-703 6120.

Thomas Kyd's revenge drama The Spanish Tragedy arguably kick-started the bloody genre Jacobean dramatists later made their own.

Anyone who thinks the vigilante splatter piece is peculiar to late 20th- century Hollywood ought to check out Michael Boyd's revival, in which a father, failed by the law, takes his own violent revenge on those responsible for the death of his son.

pounds 11-pounds 18, RSC The Pit, Barbican, London EC2; 0171-638 8891.

Though the progression from cuddly, giggly stand-up to novelist and dark comic philosopher was perhaps inevitable, Sean Hughes is sticking to his guns. Alibis for Life, his new bleaker, relatively gag-free show got a mixed reception in Edinburgh, but don't underestimate the Irish comedian's ability to grow on you.

The Oakengate Theatre, Telford; 01952 619 020