House and Garden contrive an ingenious variation on this conceit

House and Garden contrive an ingenious variation on this conceit. In Noises Off, Michael Frayn famously revolves the action so you are alternately privy to the backstage and the onstage antics at the performance of some grisly farce. EVERY EXIT is an entrance somewhere else - this truism takes on a loopy new lease of life in House and Garden, a two-play entertainment by Alan Ayckbourn, premiered in the author's engaging, high-precision production at Scarborough. Sleep and his contemporary Harold King, who directs City Ballet of London, can afford to feel a little smug, but are more likely to put their time to more profitable use planning their next ventures.Tour continues until 31 July.

Aspects of Dance comes off very presentably in comparison with recent medium-scale tours by the Royal Ballet and English National Ballet. From the romantic Les Sylphides to the grand Sleeping Beauty, from Bourn-onville's Flower Festival to a sailors' dance by Michael Rolnick, from an evocation of Loie Fuller or Pavlova's `Dragon Fly' solo to Sleep's `Three Little Maids from School', they must spend almost as much energy changing costumes behind the scenes as they do on stage - and that's saying something.Nothing is less than ably done, and some of it rather better than that. As compere, he neatly sets the numbers in context, conveying a lot of information without a hint of condescension.I wish I could credit the individual contributions of all the dancers, but they are kept far too busy to make that possible. There was - and is - the sheer delight in dance that he communicates, and a rare ability to present himself as being on the same wavelength as his audience.

He can still pull off a flashy Tarantella as the show's climax, with two young women to pace him, one throwing in some showy fouettes, the other a series of lightly soaring grands jetes.Besides, Sleep's star quality never depended on technique alone. Yet there's still a lot of speed in his movements and an impressive facility in all sorts of turning steps. Of course, he no longer has the tremendous stamina and springiness he used to enjoy. He is chubbier than he was, and has sensibly given up tights in favour of dark trousers and an open necked shirt. There is also a good dose of new choreography, notably Christopher Hampson's lively, demanding number for three men, and his sinuously exotic short ballet, Dinar Esade, set to 15th-century near-Eastern music. You might ask whether Sleep, now 50, can still dance. About half of it is devoted to popular highlights of classical ballet, taking in tap, jazz, a touch of old-time music hall, and Sleep's affectionate burlesque of two well- known skating stars renowned for their Bolero.

Aspects of Dance stars the diminutive virtuoso and 10 good dancers from City Ballet of London; its two-month tour will take it from one end of the country to the other The programme itself is a kind of tour, too. ANY SHOW directed by Wayne Sleep comes with a guarantee of entertainment, and this one reveals his flair operating at a high level. As Wishwood's iron-willed matriarch, on whose altar she's misguidedly sacrificed everything, Margaret Tyzack beautifully suggests, through her grim final mask of desolation and belated recognition, that it is she, and not her son, Harry - off to do God knows what on his higher plane of reality - who is the play's true tragic figure.Box office: 01789 295623. But she plays the role with great conviction, particularly in the sequence where she unpins her hair and starts massaging her groin, evoking the erotic past at the moment she predicts, with incantatory fervour, the curse's eventual undoing. You might quibble that Lynn Farleigh looks too young to play Agatha, the aunt who is Harry's spiritual mother as, through an act of renunciation, she may have saved his life when he was in the womb. With stockings pulled over their faces and sporting dark middle-class clothes, they look like a collection of Anglican carol singers who've taken a leaf out of the terrorists' PR handbook.Elsewhere, the production's touch is sure. A few years ago Julia Bardsley hit on the ingenious solution of displaying them as creepy midget versions of Harry's relations - giving shuddery substance to the idea that he is the troubled "consciousness" of his (unhappy) family" Noble's Furies don't make the flesh creep nearly so much.