AFICIONADOS of opera and fans of musicals will get a chance to mingle

and compare notes both high and low next week at Glasgow Royal Concert

Hall, when Opera in Concert, the London-based production company,

present a concert version of West Side Story on May 26. This means in

effect that the boring bits, like the dancing and the sets, have been

removed, allowing you to concentrate on the wonderfully exhilarating

music and the timeless songs.

The music will be played by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, all

80-odd of them (some of them very odd indeed) and the soloists will be

Aussie soprano Amanda Thane, who will be singing the role of Maria, and

Christopher Ventris, who will be singing Tony. Both of these come

trailing clouds of glory and outstanding reviews, and Ventris has just

had a huge success in the Royal Opera's Katya Kabanova at Covent Garden.

Another Antipodean soprano, Dame Kiri te Kanawa, popularised (or

should that be elitised?) the Bernstein masterwork when she recorded it

in the eighties with Jose Carreras and Bernstein conducting. There has

been a bit of purist muttering about dragging songs and arias raw and

bleeding from their various settings but the concert which this company

put on at the Concert Hall last year was an outstanding success, and it

had Michael Tumelty, Lord High Tum-te-Tum himself, absolutely

rhapsodising.

As well as Tonight, Maria, I Feel Pretty, Somewhere and the rest,

there will be songs from Gershwin's An American in Paris and the

incomporable Porgy and Bess.''

Altogether now ''Summertime, and the livin's is e-e-easy''.

Mayfest finishes tomorrow but you can still see and enjoy the totally

terrific Dumbstruck at the Tron until Sunday. Take incontinence pads and

a plastic bag because if you don't wet yourself laughing you'll guffaw

yourself sick.

The ensemble playing is exquisite and it would be desperately unfair

to single out one actor from this perfectly blended production, so

naturally I'm going to.

If you see a better-paced and funnier performance than the one Jimmy

Chisholm delivers then you will be a lucky theatregoer indeed. He walks

the tightrope of OTT temptation with an aplomb Blondine would have

envied, teettering tantalisingly on the edge of parody without ever

falling over. Director Michael Boyd is to be congratuled on assembling

this manic crew.

It has been my Mayfest highlight so far but if you were to stick

around the Tron after the show tonight and tomorrow you might experience

at 10.45pm Virtual Reality, a savagely comic attack on the politically

correct, among many others, which doesn't take any prisoners.

It stars, apart from the above mentioned J Chisholm, the sublime Andy

Gray, who is to over-the-topness what Hoover is to vacuum cleaners

(eponymous, a big sook and not so dusty) and also Billy McIlhaney, High

Thespe of the East and Hibee extraordinaire.

The gallus and glamorous Barbara Rafferty supplies the distaff humour

from this week's headlines and these are people not to be trifled with,

unless you want a metaphorical custard pie in the face.