The world according to Sessions .sx THERE was a moment in the second half of John Sessions's sic !sx Travelling Tales at the Haymarket Theatre when the remarkable entertainer lost his way .sx He was in the middle of a conversation between Gustav Mahler and Bob Dylan ( such bizarre encounters seem strangely natural in his surreal world ) and suddenly he realised he was repeating himself .sx With a smile , Sessions stopped , apologised and waited for a lengthy prompt before proceeding on his merry way .sx In most shows , such a gaffe would be an occasion of toe-curling embarrassment .sx With Sessions it was endearing , offering reassuring proof that he is human after all .sx The are those who profoundly dislike John Sessions , dismissing him as an insufferable smart aleck .sx And it is easy to see why he provokes such envious sniping .sx It seems unfair that one man should be blessed with so many gifts - a great facility for mimicry , real erudition , a beguiling stage presence and a magpie mind that seems equally at home amid high art and naff pop songs .sx He is , I suppose , an e litist comedian .sx Much of the enjoyment lies in spotting the cultural references , keeping up with Sessions's sic !sx own racing intellect .sx For those who get left behind , his shows must be a peculiarly dispiriting , even humiliating experience .sx What saves him from the charge that he is little more than a tiresome show-off is his warm enthusiasm .sx It is infectious , almost child-like , drawing the audience into the conspiracy of his own imagination .sx And that imagination is certainly at full stretch in Travelling Tales .sx If the show isn't quite as impressive as his solo Napoleon show , seen at the West End a couple of years ago , it is because it lacks a single unifying theme .sx Here Sessions takes on the whole world and it is a touch too ambitious a subject even for him .sx We begin with God , seated on a step-ladder and lamenting the pollution and destruction of the planet .sx Fears that this is going to be an earnest lecture in Greenery are dispelled , however , with the realisation that God is in fact Keith Floyd , uncorking another bottle of wine and slurring instructions at his cameraman .sx From here the show spins dizzily out of control .sx In the rainforest , tree frogs are auditioning for the cover of National Geographic magazine just as Robert de Niro is leaving Manhattan for the dubious delights of English pantomime , directed by one of Sessions's sic !sx finest creations , the terminally camp Billy Twinkle .sx Mahler and the young Hitler travel from Vienna of 1907 to present-day America , and the ancient Greek heroes somehow get entangled with the Bront e family in Yorkshire .sx What's remarkable is that this lunacy all seems perfectly logical during the show itself and it is only afterwards that you find yourself rubbing your eyes with wonder as if awakened from some fantastic dream .sx For as well as being a fine impersonator ( he does a 'monster' Nigel Kennedy impression ) , Sessions is a first-rate story-teller .sx His dotty narrative is so compelling that the audience is often reduced to attentive silence , despite the many excellent jokes , hanging on to the story-line and genuinely anxious to know what is going to happen next .sx And in the show's final scene , featuring Saddam Hussein , Sessions creates a shiver of real evil , followed by the far-from-reassuring news that God is going to take a holiday for a century or so and is handing over to his deputy , Bob Monkhouse .sx It has to be said that Travelling Tales leaves a lot of trailing loose ends , and the director , Tim Supple , might usefully have suggested a few cuts .sx But as Sessions leaves the stage at the end , his whole suit drenched in sweat after such Herculean labours , only the most churlish could fail to respond to such a prodigious and individual talent .sx Ibsen's icy epic .sx THIS revival of Ibsen's Brand at the Aldwych Theatre is a rare attempt to stage what would surely have been , had the wireless been invented in 1866 , the first great radio play .sx Like Peer Gynt it is a verse drama which was never intended for performance , and it is not surprising that there have been only three British revivals this century .sx The sheer scale of the piece seems to have scared off directors .sx The evening requires a storm at sea , an avalanche and a digestible translation for what was originally seven hours of Norwegian rhyming verse .sx This icy epic poem ( now down to three hours ) , which Peter Hall once compared to a Bruckner symphony , comes loaded with Ibsen's theme of the importance of conscience and individual will .sx Roy Marsden has taken on the role of Pastor Brand , a totally uncompromising figure who violently rebels against the pettiness and evil of society and who is confronted every step of his way by a series of agonising choices .sx The part requires a fire in the belly and the air of having walked out of a poem by Shelley or an engraving by Blake .sx Brand wanders about the frozen north like a human blowtorch , his voice one of terrifying rebuke .sx His tragedy is that in all that thin air he forgets how to love his own :sx he refuses his mother absolution on her death bed , he allows his son to die of cold , and then takes away mementos of the boy from his distraught mother .sx Everything and everyone is sacrificed to his all-or-nothing fanaticism .sx Ibsen said that " Brand was myself in my best moments " , which makes one wonder what he was like on an off day .sx Marsden certainly looks the part of the eccentric divine in his frock-coat , his bald dome fringed with long hair , nobly uttering Robert David MacDonald's rhymed translation - a very fine piece of work that manages to be satirical , epic and contemporary all at once .sx Marsden's performance is impressive rather than inspiring , but he is particularly good in public scenes where he galvanises his parishioners or confronts the corrupt mayor ( Ewan Hooper) .sx More emotional weight is carried in the key domestic scenes in which he and his wife Agnes ( played by a demure Kim Thomson ) share what must be the bleakest Christmas in all drama .sx Roger Williams's sic !sx staging wisely opts for a bare stage with Bernard Culshaw and John Bishop devising between them a set which uses smoke and giant angular wedges of light .sx This gives the whole a non-naturalistic feel , lending Ibsen's symbolism an al fresco chill .sx In the end this is a long haul up the north face of a grimly forbidding play .sx But then again there is something rather heroic about the whole enterprise of staging this impossible classic in the West End .sx ROBERT GORE-LANGTON .sx Gymnastic Ring .sx WITH Maurice B e jart's predilection for creating ballets of epic dimensions , Ring Round the Ring , given by the Ballet of the Deutsche Oper Berlin at the Playhouse Theatre , Edinburgh , comes as no surprise .sx It compresses Wagner's Ring into a long and intricate spectacle of dance , mime , staging and sound a treatment B e jart has meted out in the past to the Faust legend and to Moli e-grave re and Baudelaire .sx The result this time - running at four and a half hours with one interval - is therefore a test of stamina for performers and audience alike .sx It is couched in B e jart's free-thinking , technically flexible and completely personal idiom .sx Inevitably , its very ambitious intentions lead at times to confusion , obscurity and an overspill of quixotic ideas .sx Br u nnhilde's rock is a grand piano , coloured Japanese fans indicate a rainbow , and the court of the Gibichungs seems set in the 1930s .sx Male dancers have always dominated B e jart's work and there was fine and extremely varied dancing from Joakim Svalberg ( Siegfried ) , Martin James ( Hagen ) and Peter Schaufuss ( Alberich) .sx Vladimir Damianov was an eccentric and comic Mime , while the most arresting portrayal came from Bart de Block as Loge , conceived as a virtuoso Master of Ceremonies .sx The three most felicitous passages , however , involved a woman - Katarzyna Gdaniec as Br u nnhilde .sx Her first duet , with Patrick de Bana as Wotan , was complex emotionally as well as physically .sx The second was a joyously lustful pas de deux with Svalberg as Siegfried .sx The third , after Siegfried's death , with de Block as Loge , was a splendidly fluent ballroom routine danced with vitality and grace .sx Duplicating mirrors helped to lend interest to banal corps de ballet choreography that never rose much above unison gymnastic exercises , while the sound score was a medley of Wagner on tape , on-stage piano , and declamation in German with occasional English surtitles .sx The company , now directed by Schaufuss , made an excellent impression as both able and admirably disciplined .sx KATHRINE SORLEY WALKER .sx Struggle with evil .sx FOR the English National Opera to have brought back Tim Albery's 1988 production of Britten's Billy Budd to the Coliseum so soon after his harrowing new staging in April of Peter Grimes was an astute piece of programme planning .sx Presented in such close proximity , his productions of Britten's two great sea-drenched operas emerge as probingly complementary in their implacably dark , emotionally searing exploration of the mutual attraction and simultaneous repulsion of good and evil that brings about man's destruction .sx Each production has its own powerful , clearly defined identity , yet they share at least one fundamental , crucially important feature :sx both are stripped of any specific locale , their stories set in universal , almost abstractly symbolic or even mythological contexts .sx Underpinned by David Atherton's magnificent , grippingly controlled and paced conducting , every aspect of the performance seems to have deepened and matured in its first revival .sx In his singing and starkly intimidating presence , Richard Van Allen's Claggart presents an authoritative portrait of the man of natural depravity , of intellect without manliness , as Melville described him in his original story , and sadness without goodness .sx Philip Langridge's superbly sung and acted Captain Vere conveys even more vividly than before the heavy weight of responsibility that torments the conscience of the one whose unenviable task it is to winnow the good from the associate evil that taints it .sx In his looks , natural manner and the mellifluous ease of his singing , Peter Coleman-Wright is almost ideal as the serene , unblemished Billy , the " fond personification " , again in Melville's words , " of perfect human goodness and virtue " .sx Indeed there is hardly a weak link , from the graphically portrayed Redburn of David Wilson-Johnson in his ENO debut , Flint of Paul Napier-Burrows and Novice of Barry Banks to the fervent singing of the chorus .sx There will be nine further performances between now and the end of the month of what is one of the ENO's finest achievements - it should not be missed by anyone who cares for music theatre at its most compelling .sx ROBERT HENDERSON .sx On the question of craziness .sx MAO II .sx by Don deLillo .sx Cape , pounds14 .sx 99 .sx DON DeLILLO's unerring critical intelligence and his sense of the strange relationship between individual lives and the external world have made him one of the questioners of American society :sx His last novel , Libra , built a whole structure of personal craziness and wider conspiracy around the assassination of President Kennedy , but the final effect was less one of explanation than a reminder of how persistent complexity can be .sx DeLillo's 10th novel moves between private and public worlds in a similar way , although with less brilliance .sx At its centre is Bill Gray , a reclusive writer whose literary status grows in proportion to his isolation , as he maintains an exaggerated privacy in a world dominated increasingly by crowds .sx In the course of the book he is drawn from this regulated New England safety into the fluid world of international terrorism , on a journey which takes him via London and Athens towards Beirut .sx One phrase from the book - " it was hard to adapt to the absence of sense-making things " - conveys DeLillo's view of a world where reality is constituted by its own media images , but also highlights one of the novel's flaws .sx Unlike Libra , where an element of external plot brought a formally impressive linking of the novel's disparate strands , Mao II hinges around disintegration .sx The action becomes progressively dispersed and the conclusion , although powerful in its way , fails to bring the book together structurally .sx