Critics

But while the outspoken author and feminist muses with a vaguely guilty expression on the offence caused, you can tell she isn't really the slightest bit remorseful.

The audience with Germaine Greer at Arc was a great success with a huge mix of people turning out to spend an entertaining evening in the company of this controversial, acclaimed academic and broadcaster.

Though she is best known as a feminist icon and author of the groundbreaking book The Female Eunuch, her subject matter for the evening touched on a number of other issues.

Her love of nature crept in frequently and she recounted her recent meeting with the CPRE - "Just what are they protecting rural England from? People?" she asked incredulously.

Germaine also detailed how the prime minister of Australia publicly blasted her earlier this year for criticising Australians as "too relaxed to give a damn" in a newspaper article. She was unrepentant on that too.

And as for the male poets - well, as she told an academic conference recently - it's just male sexual display, no different from peacocks. Certainly a few feathers ruffled there then, too.

This performance wasn't the usual empowering rant we have come to expect from this outrageous, intelligent, articulate woman - but was still an enjoyable, thought-provoking evening.

Michelle Hedger

Out of Order, Darlington

Civic Theatre

RAY Cooney's excellent Westminster farce features Giles Watling, Paul Shane and Vicki Michelle in a tale about a blustering Labour MP attempting an assignation with Michael Howard's curvy blonde secretary. The evening starts well but goes into decline when the would-be adulterers discover a body half-in and half-out of their bedroom window.

When you're in a hole, the saying goes, stop digging - but Richard Willey MP is a close aide of Tony Blair and can't leave well enough alone. He enlists the aid of his Private Secretary George Pigden, who has an invalid mother looked after by a fiery nurse, and so it goes on, with Willey getting himself tangled up in a tissue of lies.

The play has all the hallmarks of British farce: the cupboard door keeps swinging open to reveal the body, the curvy blonde loses most of her clothes, the hunky husband swans about in a tiny towel, which comes adrift to expose his bare bottom - very nice, too.

There's a trend that began in pantomime and now seems to be creeping into mainstream performances, for actors to appear so helpless with laughter at their own antics that they are unable to continue with their lines. This used to be amusing, even endearing, for the audience but it happens too often in this production and becomes irritating. Comedy is much funnier if the cast takes it seriously.

Having said that, if the cast had a good time, the audience did too. I particularly enjoyed Patric Kearns' performance as The Body, and Terry O'Sullivan as The Waiter.

l Runs until Saturday. Box Office: (01325) 486555

Sue Heath