Whatever the deeper mysteries of the Romany lifestyle, they certainly know how to celebrate. The Northern Stage Ensemble's homage to Gypsy culture is loosely based around the format of a traditional Gypsy wedding, which can involve six weeks of feasting and dancing.
The plot darkens when one of the menfolk is courted by the Grim Reaper, but his narrow escape from death occasions a further six weeks of feasting and dancing. When mortality finally prevails, the deceased is greeted by all his former family and friends, who mark his passage to the afterlife with six weeks of - well, you begin to get the picture.
This semi-improvised piece has its due moments of symbolism and solemnity. But it's really a big excuse to party. Instruments are brandished, songs are bashed out at wildly accelerating speeds, plates, chairs and women are hurled with whooping abandonment. You feel as if you have been ushered to a table on a saint's day in a particularly lively eastern-European restaurant.
Joyous as this undeniably is, there lingers a faint suspicion that it is all a little ersatz. The members of the Northern Stage Ensemble are Geordies, not Gypsies. But a note of authenticity is sounded by the incomparable, tiny enigma that is the Hungarian Gypsy folk singer, Mitsou.
It was hearing this elusive singer's extraordinary voice on a CD of Hungarian music that prompted director Alan Lyddiard to scour central Europe to track her down and build a show around her. She reportedly took some persuading, but what an extraordinary coup to have carried her to Newcastle.
Mitsou is one of those rare singers for whom time seems to stop whenever she opens her mouth. With her diminutive, sparrow-like frame and lustrous eyes, she has the presence of a Gypsy Edith Piaf, with a voice that floats up like birdsong to the highest reaches of the stratosphere. At the Playhouse, her performance encapsulates Gypsy culture at its most bewitching and beguiling. It's almost enough to make you contemplate a life on the road.
· Until June 28. Box office: 0191-230 5151.
