It looked like tragedy had befallen tragedy when The National Theatre of Craiova's Oresteia, directed by Silviu Purcarate, he of Les Danaides fame, was said to have fallen out of the Belfast Festival programme. The show was booked without a full and frank assessment of the cost of staging it in the Waterfront Hall, and when the Romanians visited and listed their technical requirements, it just didn't look as if there was the money to cover the tour.

Visiting Arts, a British support organisation for visiting productions, stepped in with a rescue package of some £15,000, which also includes funds to help out the Societas Rafaello Sanzio's Belfast production of Julius Caesar, which booked out at the Dublin Theatre Festival.

The Belfast production will have surtitles, which even this Italophile found sadly lacking in the Dublin production - in fact, the company had never performed the show internationally without surtitles before, and deemed the decision not to have them in Dublin a false economy.

But soft! For all is still not quite well in Belfast, due to circumstances beyond their control. The Wooster Group from New York, who had promised to perform the UK and Ireland premiere of Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape with screen actor, Willem Dafoe, has changed its plans entirely. Dafoe has cancelled, "due to film commitments".

However, they're still coming, with another "UK and Ireland premiere" by O'Neill, The Emperor Jones. It tells the story of Brutus Jones, a convict from the US, who has set himself up as an emperor on an island in the West Indies, but retreats to the jungle to be destroyed by his own terror as revolution threatens. It was first performed in 1920, then revived on Broadway, and made into a film in 1933 with Paul Robeson in the leading role, one of the few decent parts for black actors then available. Wooster are staging the play with a white woman, wearing boot polish, in the part. Which is all very well, but hardly a substitute for a full-blown American, gravelly-voiced screen idol strutting his stuff on the stage of the Waterfront Hall.

People all over the island would be advised to swallow their disappointment, however, and avail of the weekend packages on offer for the festival: £40 will get you two nights sharing with a well beloved in a guest house, and £49 quid will get you the same in a hotel. There is a "Two for the price of one" ticket offer on some shows, and a special bus pass rate.

Phone Belfast 667687 for information.