This year we sent our drama critic Ian Carp to the Rymington play festival. Every two years this festival shows the best productions by new authors. This is what Ian thought of this year's plays.

The festival got off to a bad start with this production by Devon writer Susan Fere. Though she is a successful writer, her play seems to be badly organised. Although it is meant to be a love story, it is hard to like or sympathise with any of the characters. Julie Caraway is hopeless as the farmer's daughter who falls in love with a mysterious stranger, and the stranger, played by Jules Oates tries hard with weak dialogue and a silly story. Summer's End could not end soon enough.

I loved this play, but it is not for everybody. The various characters of Shakespeare's plays meet at a party and discuss their roles. Some, like Kate from the Taming of the Shrew, are furious with what the playwright has done with them. So the characters plot to kidnap the writer when he is next completely wrapped up in a play, and ... but I won't reveal the ending. The play is the result of a discussion at a party very like the one which opens the play. But to enjoy yourself, you really need to know your Shakespeare.

James Domb 007-543302 (office), or 005-934088 (mobile hunter-killer wrist telephone) is not just another James Bond imitator. His fiendishly inventive gadgets are wildly amusing, and the plot is patched together from dozens of Bond books and movies. The result is a fresh and funny look at spy stories and films, all done in the worst possible taste. Animal lovers will be outraged by the exploding hamster scene. The action gets just a little bit tired toward the end, but overall, this is a very good start to Kelly Raymonworth's writing career.

This dark and fascinating study of a young man's rise to international fame as a singer is one of the best plays in the festival. There is a tiny cast - Karel Urilch who is brilliant as the mother who drives her son to success, and Peter Fanway, who plays opposite her as the young genius who pays the emotional cost of her ambitions. The bare settings - dark shadowy rooms without furniture - heighten the mood of the play. Well before the end we know it will finish in tragedy, but the tension still increases toward the finish.

This play is "experimental". Sometimes the stage is empty for minutes on end. There is background music which sounds like someone hitting a dustbin with a tin plate, and sometimes one of the only two characters says something like. "The green grass on our pavements burns life into our forebrains, denying the winter of technology, forcing our cells to be" . Either this is an exciting development in theatre technique, or it is complete rubbish. More than half the audience left at the interval, never to return - I agree with them.