This World: One Day Of War (BBC2)

A man who has a gun is not afraid," declared Muktar, a 14-year-old Somalian carrying a weapon almost as big as himself.

He was part of the Harborgidir Militia in Mogadishu, Somalia, and was featured here as one of 16 people around the globe who wake up every day in a war zone.

The documentary followed them over one day, March 22, in a reminder that the conflict in Iraq may make all the headlines but that war is a way of life for many people.

The statistics are grim - every minute two people die because of war. The reasons people put their lives at risk range from political convictions to financial gain.

Muktar has known nothing else. He was found in the ruins of a bombed-out house when he was four, by the side of his dead parents. He was taken in and raised by one of the militia. Ten years later, he's a gun for hire in Somalia, where the war officially ended in 1993 but where, with five factions fighting for control, the unrest continues.

The long-running nature of many of the wars was brought home on being informed that rebels in the Philippines have been fighting for a communist state for 30 years.

The Hmong, in Eastern Laos, have been fighting since 1975. They supported America during the Vietnam War and have been paying ever since. They live a life on the move. In the past year, they've moved 15 times. The sight of a father with a gun in his hand and a child slung over his shoulder was shocking. Thirteen-year-olds are taught how to detect ambushes and landmines.

Time and again, we saw children caught up in conflict. I was going to call them innocent but many, like Muktar, are worldly wise in the ways of war.

In Uganda, the threat is kidnap. The army is needed to protect children. Some 20,000 have been taken, by religious-cults-come-rebel-groups, and made to join in the killing and torture. Sometimes girls are raped and forcibly married to the rebels.

Women too are heavily involved in war. We met Shushila Nagar, a 24-year-old who'd been training for four years with the Maoist rebels. She was off on her first active mission, armed with an old flintlock rifle that was standard issue in Napoleonic times.

Eliana Gonzales Acosta is the highest ranking woman in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia, having spent the past 30 years patrolling the jungle. She's 50 and a grandmother who, like many women, has never had a normal family life. A third of the fighters in the movement are female.

Iraq was not forgotten. The American soldier we met, Private Juan Alvarado, had joined up after doing time for drug offences and hoped military service would put his life back in order. He believed the people fighting them are Iraqi criminals, not terrorists.

As for Muktar, four days after participating in the film, he was shot and killed following an argument with one of his friends. It was a chilling end to a thoughtful documentary.

A Midsummer Night's Dream,

Gala Theatre, Durham

THIS operatic interpretation of the Shakespearean play is being performed in tandem with The Marriage of Figaro, as part of English Touring Opera's 25th anniversary tour. With a score by Benjamin Britten, its credentials are sound, although some may question the concept of turning this classic play into an opera at all. However, it was with an open mind that I attended the performance, hoping to see a fresh and innovative reworking of an old favourite.

It started slow. This is a play in which the action takes place almost exclusively in the enchanted wood and consequently, there is little visual variation. The set and scenery, enhanced by dim lighting, were atmospheric enough, but they were let down by the slowness of the story.

The first half establishes the faery king and queen, Oberon and Tytania, as masters of a surreal world populated by invisible nymphs. When mortal lovers Lysander and Hermia, and Helena and Demetrius appear, they begin to playfully interfere. Puck, Oberon's captive henchman, is sent to brush Demetrius' eyes with a magic flower to make him fall in love with Helena, who he has previously shunned, but mistakenly brushes Lysander's instead, resulting in chaos.

In the meantime, preparations for a comic play by a group of craftsmen are under way, and Puck makes mischief again by transforming the hapless Bottom into an ass.

In the best traditions of Shakespearean comedy, it all ends well, but with the opera's dark mood and lack of pace, it feels like something of an endurance test.

Sarah Foster

Tell Me On A Sunday, Darlington Civic Theatre

MARTI Webb is one of those performers destined never to be a megastar, and the reason for that is a mystery. Her voice is by turns tender and powerful, her stage persona is engaging and she looks good, too. Yet because she isn't surrounded by the hype of some other enduring stars of the musical theatre, it seems easier to relate to her in this very intimate performance.

Critics of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber sneer at his music but I guess I must be a musical simpleton because I find many of his songs beautiful and moving. In this production, Unexpected Song and Tell Me On A Sunday brought goosebumps to my arms and tears to my eyes. Don Black wrote the words and he's a man in touch with his feminine side; so many of the songs speak of experiences every woman shares.

Alone onstage for the entire evening, Ms Webb gives a masterly performance, keeping us close as she flees to New York after a failed relationship and sharing with us her heartbreak, her wry observations on the American way of life, her joy at finding new love and, inevitably, her hurt at another break-up. She's just like us, falling in love, being lied to, finding out her lover is unfaithful, and moving on, sadly but full of hope. I wasn't the only one fumbling for tissues during the final song, Somewhere, Someplace, Sometime, and the applause at the end was thunderous and well-deserved.

l Runs until Saturday. Box Office (01325) 486555

Sue Heath