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ABM? That is the American Business Model the stylised version of US corporate behaviour which in extreme form arguably led to the

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ABM? That is the American Business Model, the stylised version of US corporate behaviour, which in extreme form arguably led to the collapses of Enron and WorldCom.At least it was shareholders who lost money on Enron. Why are some countries rich and others poor? Why do people doing the same job in Mexico and the US, a few miles apart, get completely different wages? Why did Argentina, 100 years ago one of the richest countries of the world, fall so far behind?Coca-Cola, Bill Gates, Madonna, Boo , Nick Leeson – they all get walk-on roles So too do relativity, DNA, the green revolution and ABM. He gives answers to those puzzling questions that nag the non-specialist. Here is a man who can explain Pareto efficiency in words that most of us can understand. John Kay's new book seeks to explain why, for all their faults, they arrive at better decisions than cabinet ministers or Soviet planners. Because Professor Kay is one of the leading British economists of his generation, his voyage of discovery takes him into a crash course in economics. There is nothing like a global bubble followed by recession to make people question that core mechanism of exchange.

Markets are a bit like democracy: the worst system for allocating resources, save for all the others. He and Jason Hughes, the actor who plays his Roman sidekick here, were Jimmy Porter and his sidekick Cliff in an excellent recent production of Look Back In Anger at the National.On the evidence of this, Sheen would make a stunning Hamlet and Grandage would be the ideal director Come on, guys, what are you waiting for?. Whether dolled-up as an eye-batting drag Venus in a blasphemous travesty or blowing the whistle on bad poets in a hilarious Gong Show-style verse contest, Sheen shows you an agonised young man who is genuinely trying to grapple with the intellectual conundrum of why there should be morality at all.Sheen, with his triangular, sensitive-clown's face and his physical flamboyance is dream casting. At the start, he beautifully establishes the dazed, groping sincerity of Caligula's born-again predicament. And who better to achieve this than a man with absolute power; and how better to do it than by a regime of arbitrary hedonism and violence?In a role that could easily become rebarbative and repetitive, Michael Sheen gives one of the most thrilling and searching performances I have ever witnessed. If the world is essentially absurd and meaningless, he reasons, why is one action any better than another? Society, which represses this truth, needs to be undeluded and taught a lesson. It uses a zestful and fresh-sounding new translation by David Greig.The play homes in on the young Roman Emperor at the point where the death of his incestuously beloved sister, Drusilla, has brought about a life-changing existentialist conversion in him.

A metaphysical project is the underlying aim, though, of his mad reign of terror in Camus' play Caligula, which is revived now in Michael Grandage's savagely funny and superbly judged production at the Donmar Warehouse. In showbiz terms, what does the name Caligula mean to you? Probably either the cracked and cackling John Hurt in I, Claudius or that toga party from hell in the notorious Bob Guccione Penthouse movie, starring Malcolm McDowell, a bummer from which everyone, starting with Gore Vidal, fought in vain to dissociate themselves. As far as popular culture goes, it's a name more associated with sex and scandal than with philosophy. 'In Arabia' to 17 May (020-7722 9301); 'The Game Hunter' to 24 May (020-8940 3633), then at Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, 29 May-12 July (01723 370541). Highly adroit plotting that this skilfully giddy production does proud. She resolves to repay him in kind, never suspecting that the love-nest of her long-term admirer will be in the very building where her spouse is getting up to no good.If you think that the only thing that can happen to trousers in a farce is to drop to the wearer's ankles, there is an artful and very amusingly sustained gag here involving two similar pairs of trousers (belonging to an uncle and his feckless nephew) and an incriminating love-note.

How can you perform it in an in-the-round space with never a door in sight? The way Walters and cast square the circle (so to speak) on that, with live sound effects and expert miming, adds a further dimension of charm to a delightful evening.The play takes off from the discovery by Leontine (a splendidly fraught Amanda Royle) that her husband's alleged hunting trips are a blind for extra-marital nookie. It's a play (and a genre) that depends on a lot of frantic mayhem with rushed-through and banged doors. This is a spry version by Richard Cottrell of an early Feydeau piece, Monsieur Chasse. Over at the Orange Tree, Richmond now there is a lovely variant on the normal way of presenting farce in Sam Walters's sparkling and exuberant production of The Game Hunter. What I wanna do ain't gonna take but five."In Arabia is a powerful variant of the hitting-bedrock-in-the-boozer type of play.

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