Nigel Jarrett casts an eye over the next few weeks to help you plan your days and nights out .

It's not often that a Welsh showbusiness icon performs at one of our smaller theatres, so the visit of actress Sian Phillips to Abergavenny on March 5 is not to be missed.

She appears for just one night at the town's Borough Theatre in a one-woman show devised and directed by Thierry Harcourt.

It follows her critically-acclaimed role in Marlene, the Pam Gems play which homes in on a 65-year-old Marlene Dietrich in Paris during a world tour, including the hausfrau side of the Hollywood seductress as she cleans her dressing-room while kneeling on a fur coat.

Phillips herself can lay claim to a similar kind of autumnal blossom, and Falling in Love Again, the title of her Abergavenny show, will be in part unashamedly autobiographical as she recalls in words and song its bitter-sweet periods of life and love.

There will be songs by Kurt Weill, Rodgers and Hart and Billy Joel, to name a few and to take for granted the Dietrich element.

As her published autobiography will be on sale at the show, Ms Phillips will be around afterwards to sign copies. Tickets at £14 (concessions £12). Box office 01873 850805.

It's right and proper that Welsh dramatists should have an outlet in the Principality's theatres and one of the most consistently erudite, Ian Rowlands, is to the fore at Newport's Riverfront for a four-day run from March 1 to 4 with Butterfly, performed by the splendid Theatr Y Byd in association with the theatre - 01633 656757.

Three northern repertory companies - Castleford's Pilot Theatre, York Theatre Royal and Bolton Octagon Theatre - combine to bring Ayub Khan-Din's hilarious East is East to the Riverfront from March 14 to 16. The film of the play was a hit - and a boost for race relations in showing how we are all, whatever creed or colour, a bit strange in managing our family relationships.

March at the Dolman Theatre, Newport, sees a typical mix of stage shows which looks forward to the gala evening of entertainment on April 1 to celebrate the theatre's refurbishment. Hope the organisers have a sense of humour rather than a superstitious foreboding about the date.

Gwent comedy writer Rob Gotobed and his Novelty Blue Whale ensemble present the latest of Rob's zany parodies in aid of the Noah's Ark Appeal (the Wales Children's Hospital) at Abergavenny Borough Theatre on March 31.

An Elephant Out West takes the mickey out of Hollywood Westerns in a musical show typical of its Abergavenny author's sketches for The Fast Show, Russ Abbot, Bobby Davro and others. Tickets £7 (concessions £6).

The young orchestra Sinfonia Cymru will be at Blackwood Miners Institute on March 3 - 01495 227206.

They have the pleasure of supporting its deepening relationship with this part of SE Wales, particularly at the Riverfront, where it appears two nights later with exactly the same programme of Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Beethoven. Cellist Li Wei is the soloist in Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme. This choice of evenings out for March is a fraction of what venues are offering. Please check brochures, or join mailing lists.