With ROY MARSDEN, Artistic Director, Palace Theatre

As I think about writing this column I often cast about to see what else is in the papers.

It's particularly interesting to find out what's been happening when I'm in the focused world of rehearsal for our new play Stand Up.

The actors and I surface at the end of the day like divers coming up from the bottom of the ocean and head for a quick half at the local. All we want to talk about is the world of the play.

So what is going on in the real world? A quick overview gives me Betty Boothroyd's retirement, Mr Blair, Mr Hague, the new Harry Potter book and... aha, Patsy Kensit has left Liam Gallagher. Again.

I pick up someone's paper in the train and it contains a full page analysis of the situation. Apparently men are in crisis and Mr Gallagher's plight has sparked everyone into writing about it. Are we in crisis?

The men in Stand Up certainly seem to be. Our play centres around a female stand up comedian, who is succeeding in a male dominated world.

Her hardening edges make it tough for her husband not to feel he's loosing himself as he trots around behind her to gig after gig.

The other men are predatory, down trodden or cynical.

And yet . . . they are redeemable. Their wit is razor sharp, and one can't help feeling as the play progresses that each of them has a moment where the possibility of change is genuine and real.

Maybe the reason I don't believe that all men are in crisis because theatre men and women are just that little bit different.

Living on the edge as they do, struggling financially and artistically, the sexes have plenty of common ground in the theatre.

The actors and I are surrounded by the plays that everyone else is working on, ranging from inspirational to the just plain fun.

In the space of the next week at the Palace, we have Robert Powell, Beethoven and Charles Dickens and that represents a pretty broad spectrum of masculinity!

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.