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

Enduring entertainers who have survived the vagaries of fashion are strewn fairly thickly among the offerings from local venues next month.

Following Sian Phillips's magisterial appearance in Abergavenny in March, the indestructible Joan Collins comes to St David's Hall, Cardiff on April 14 (Box office 02920 878444).

Her special guests are called 4 Poofs and a Piano, an ensemble which sounds like the founder of the Political Incorrectness Society but is probably the sort of accompanying unit Ms Collins would choose to maintain her high outrage quotient.

She'll be talking about her career and her colourful life on and off the screen, and then she will take questions from the audience. Who will dare to ask her how she contrives to look about 40 a month away from her 73rd birthday?

Also looking back - but not that far - at SDH on April 22 will be the orchestra of young professionals, Sinfonia Cymru, in their 10th anniversary concert.

It is likely to be a regular visitor to Newport, but this concert, including Beethoven's Choral Symphony is appropriately in the capital to affirm the high esteem in which the orchestra is held, especially by its guests on the night, among them opera star Bryn Terfel and pianist Llyr Williams (in Beethoven's Emperor Concerto).

There will be more celebration of longevity in north Gwent when Walter Trout, formerly with Canned Heat, John Lee Hooker and John Mayall and recently voted sixth best guitaist ever by BBC radio listeners, appears at Ebbw Vale Sports Centre on April 15. (01495 350360).

At Beaufort Theatre in the town on April 21, film critic Barry Norman, part of the knowledgable generation of TV presenters who have been replaced by a younger, millennial generation whose ignorance is considered a virtue, talks about his life and answers audience questions (01495 350360).

The night before at the same venue the Beaufort enjoys something of a coup in presenting world-class Scottish jazz guitarist Martin Taylor and colleague Martin Simpson.

Ralph McTell, who has won a Lifetime Achievement award for song writing from the BBC, is at the Newport Riverfront on April 13, with both unfamiliar songs and some taken from 30 years as a writer and performer (01633 656757). Angel Laughter, the first volume of Ralph's autobiography, is now available in paperback.

Shiver, a theatrical work based on the myth of the vengeful, mermaid-like Melusine, is presented at the Riverfront on April 6 by the Platform 4 company, which specialises in spectacular stage effects employing sound and light.

Unusual but faithful adaptations are a stock-in-trade of Shifting Sands, which presents Dickens's Great Expectations at Abergavenny Borough Theatre on April 1 (01873 850805).

At the Wales Millennium Centre from April 11 to 29, the long-running West End show Starlight Express, Andrew Lloyd Webber's entertainment on skates, rolls in after 18 years in London (08700 402000).

Finally, much looking back to mark something new takes place at the gala evening at the refurbished Dolman Theatre, Newport, on April 1, in a motley presentation by the city's musical theatre and dance groups (01633 263670).

One of them, Newport Operatic Society, opens there with the evergreen South Pacific, by Rodgers and Hammmerstein, on April 4.