TV review

Inside Hitler's Bunker (five)

The Great Escape: Revealed (five)

THE only thing missing from Inside Hitler's Bunker were Location Location Location's TV estate agents Kirstie and Phil to give us a guided tour.

This res became even more des in the spring of 1945 as the Allies came knocking on the front door, forcing Adolf and his chums to retreat downstairs to their bunker.

Kirstie would have ignored one description of the property as "a squalid concrete hole under the ground". Instead, she'd show the 40 rooms, while assuring prospective purchasers that with walls 13ft thick, the neighbours could play their stereo as loud as they liked and you wouldn't hear a thing.

The only sound came from the humming of ventilators recycling air for the bunker 36ft beneath the ground, and from the flushing of the toilets "that worked surprisingly well", to quote one of Hitler's staff.

Here, Phil would have pointed out, is the store cupboard with enough food, water and champagne to last a month. Communications were good. Friends could phone you - Hitler's number was 120050 if calling from outside.

Guest rooms were a selling point too. Mr and Mrs Goebbels and their six children stayed there. They might need a new carpet, though, as the couple committed suicide there after killing their children.

Don't worry about being trapped. There's an emergency exit through which the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun were carried before being cremated in the garden, an ideal space for barbecues in other circumstances.

Poor Kirstie wouldn't get a chance to engage in her favourite occupation of taking a sledgehammer to the walls and making the place open-plan. In a bid to keep the bunker a secret, the allies blew it up. The remains are buried beneath a car park.

The makers of the documentary recreated the bunker in 3D based on plans and eyewitness accounts of the place. Kirstie and Phil were made redundant as we were taken on a virtual reality computer tour.

While Hitler didn't want to leave his bunker, the PoWs in Stalag Luft III were using Tom, Dick and Harry to plot their great escape. They were the names give to the three tunnels they dug under the noses of their German guards.

The Great Escape: Revealed took three former PoWs back to the site as archaeologists used modern methods to locate Dick, the previously-undiscovered tunnel.

The modern day diggers discovered how difficult and dangerous it was tunnelling through sand.

Trying to escape was, in the words of one PoW, "such fun, it was a game, a sport". But it turned nasty. Of the 76 escapees, only three reached freedom and 50 of the recaptured men paid a terrible price. They were shot by the Gestapo.

The Sleeping Beauty on Ice, Gala Theatre, Durham

AS an intimate venue with a fairly small stage, the Gala is not the most obvious choice for this show, and I initially wondered - with some concern - if both ice rink and audience would be shipped outside. However, due to some clever technology, the ice rink has been created on top of the stage, thankfully making for a comfortable night for the audience.

The traditional story of Sleeping Beauty is told largely through the skating, although there are voice-overs providing the thread of the plot. As these are few and far between, however, you have to have a good memory, and I was a bit confused at times as to which character was which.

That said, the skating was so captivating, it didn't really matter. Accompanied by Tchaikovsky's music, the talented cast - apparently all top skaters - glided round the confined space with deceptive ease. The choreography, by Cavaliere Guiseppe Arena (who worked with Rudolph Nureyev, no less) was smoothly and often thrillingly executed, with hardly a single tense moment.

None of the skating was weak, with even the ensemble sections including impressive spins and jumps, and much of it was highly impressive. I particularly enjoyed Olga Pershankova's frenetic performance as the bad fairy Carabosse, Olympic gymnast Ioulia Barsoukova as the flexibly feline white cat and the forest birds' acrobatics. With the addition of lavish costumes and colourful sets, the show is a visual feast that provides a refreshing alternative to ballet.

Sarah Foster

Runs until Saturday. Box office 0191-332 4041

An Evening of Baroque Music, Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle

ROD Hall, who conceived his daughter Florence days before undergoing a lifesaving operation for prostate cancer, intended the event as a celebration of new beginnings and hope, as well as a showcase for the mandolin. He hit the mark on all counts at an Evening of Baroque Music in the atmospheric Music Room of the Bowes Museum. Joined by continuo Margaret Lewis, Hall started with Beethoven's Sonatine in C for Mandolin and Piano, a work otherwise relegated to dusty shelves.

Injecting his performance with a witty and informative talk on the virtues of his favoured instrument, he then took on Vivaldi's Concerto in C for Mandolin, with polished backing from members of the Young Sinfonia. Vivaldi's Concerto in G for Double Mandolin saw Hall start with a flutter or two in the first movement, but he pressed on with aplomb to the andante, which got to the heart of the score with fluent exchanges with violinist Miriam Davies.

The second half of the programme was taken up with superb performances from the Young Sinfonia, under the avuncular direction of Alan Fearon.

If this is the quality of music the youth has to offer, it bodes well for the future of the classics. A heartfelt rendition of two movements of a Handel concerto grosso was followed by Bach's Concerto for Oboe and Strings, which saw a brilliant display from oboist Jennifer Brittlebank. Her repartee with violinist Miriam Davies was spellbinding; the adagio was quite sublime. The evening rounded off a pulsating interpretation of a complete Handel concerto grosso. An auspicious start to the Music at the Bowes 2004 series.

Gavin Engelbrecht