TV review

NOT everyone would agree with Sue when she says: "It's like rearing a baby. Of course I love him. Why wouldn't I? He's beautiful." She was talking about a rat, a creature few regard as good-looking, and certainly not suitable to keep as a pet.

They have scaly tails, greasy bellies and sharp little needle teeth - so do some humans I know, but that's another matter. They are dirty vermin.

Sue would bristle with annoyance at such thoughts. She and husband George have rats as pets. When they die, after only a two-year life span, they're buried in the rat cemetery in the garden.

Poor Ben died in 1999 before his time. "The wound is still raw, like losing a member of the family," said Sue.

Then there's Munchkin. Or rather, there was Munchkin, called "a rather unfortunate pet" on account of his deformed jaw, one eye and locked shoulder. Sue groomed his fur with a toothbrush.

When they found him dead one morning, Sue was upset but philosophical: "We are grateful for every day we had with him because he was such a special little treasure".

Others in this entertaining, if unsettling, documentary thought otherwise. The setting was Liverpool, although these rodents are never far away, wherever you live. There are 60 million in the country, with rat sightings up 25 per cent nationally.

People deal with them in different ways. Gangs of boys go rat-hunting down alleys clogged with overflowing black bags of rubbish. They beat them to death with sticks which, as someone rightly pointed out, is a horrible way to entertain yourself.

John and Joss are adults who spend their free time taking pot-shots at rats with their air rifles. They are possibly the world's worst shots, judging from the evidence in the film.

They did bag five rats in Dave and Elaine's garden, a sort of nocturnal Disneyland for Scouse rats to come out and play after lights out.

Ian the council rat catcher found vermin - dead, alive and in various stages of decay - under patios, walls, piles of rubbish and in garden sheds.

Even the houseproud don't escape. One woman fled her home after hearing the sound of rats in the walls. "Small round mammal, weighing one pound; grown woman, weighing 116 pounds. No contest, she's off," said the narrator as she went to stay elsewhere.

Sue and George, who've kept rats for seven years, see things differently. She even says it's possible to train a rat to answer to its name. "They're as intelligent as a two-and-a-half year old child," said Sue.

Cinzano and Smirnova's Birthday, Gulbenkian Studio, Newcastle.

IN director Neil Murray's design, the Gulbenkian Studio space has been transformed into a derelict basement flat in Moscow.

The audience for this Northern Stage Ensemble production sits on two sides of the long raised acting area, with video images projected on to the bare walls around them.

In the first play, Cinzano, three men drink Cinzano and talk and get drunk. In the second, Smirnova's Birthday, three women drink Cinzano and talk and get drunk.

The accents in this production of Russian writer Ludmilla Petrushevskya's double bill are Geordie and Yorkshire, although the situations in which the characters find themselves are rooted in the Moscow of the 1980s, as communism gave way to capitalism.

The emotional and economic dilemmas are universal. Love and money make the world go round. And most of us can associate with the feeling of losing control after drinking too much.

The men (Mark Calvert, Alex Elliott and Tony Neilson) are concerned with commerce, whereas the women (Jane Arnfield, Nicola Barber and Lorraine Hodgson) seem more worried about men and social standing. A mother's death and a wife's betrayal are among issues that emerge during the heavy drinking sessions.

The cast throw themselves into the drinking and dramatics with gusto, resulting in a multi-media experience you could only get in a theatre space, not in front of the TV and cinema screen.

Steve Pratt

* Runs until October 25. Tickets 0191-230 5151.

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