Choice: Theatre

Oh Les Beaux Jours, Riverside Studios, London W6 (0171-928 3232)

When Paul Taylor saw Natasha Parry in her husband Peter Brook's production of Beckett's tour-de-force, he declared it one of the masterpieces of post-war theatre. Then along came Rosaleen Linehan in Karel Reisz's production. Anyone lucky enough to have seen Linehan's superbly suburban Winnie - a cross between a Fifties Beverley Sister and an Irish Mother Superior, albeit buried in sand - will have fallen under the spell of the play's deliciously playful Irish rhythms as Linehan rabbited away with a would-be gentility to cover over the boredom and fear caused by being steadily ignored. Parry, meanwhile, lends a girlish grace and fragility which points up the heart-breaking sorrow behind Winnie's stoicism. Beckett, however, wrote the play in French which is the text that Parry and Brook use. There are no surtitles, but aficonados would be advised to book.

David Benedict