But the history isn't allowed to get too sober.James Clotfelter's set frames the stage with scaffolding. The film screen is made from strips of battered fabric, hanging above the three DJ platforms. Dancers' reminiscences are blasted over a rattling sound system - thunderously loud, but sometimes hard to follow.There's more scene-setting from the Mop Top Crew Music and costumes suggest different eras. Legends of Hip-Hop started out as a Philadelphia festival, a week of performances and discussions It was a huge hit, and started to tour internationally. The show includes dancers from the 1970s and 1980s, the inventors of the boogaloo and the lock.

There's an insistence on historical roots, a wish to explain the development of different styles. It's a mixed bag, but there are several terrific performances. Harris is one of the best-known choreographers in hip-hop, and one of the most serious. He's interested in hip-hop as a theatrical form in its own right, moving away from pop videos. With his own company, Rennie Harris Puremovement, he has made hip-hop dramas. He also has an academic side: the film clips in this show draw on hip-hop conferences, with discussions of different styles.Though Harris doesn't appear in this show, it brings the two sides of his work together.

The South Bank Centre's big Easter show, Legends of Hip-Hop, is half documentary, half gala night. The Philadelphia choreographer Rennie Harris has arranged an evening of star appearances, held together with video links and a team of house dancers. Yet his shallowness befits Anna's handsome lover who is unable to share responsibility for the devastating effect their immoral relationship has on Anna's life.Where Romanes succeeds best is at bringing a degree of intimacy to the private passions and public morality of Clifford's snapshots of Tolstoy's characters. But the welding of Kitty's life-giving moment with Anna's life-ebbing one detracts from the latter. Sheffield's Crucible, for whom Clifford's adaptation was intended, must be kicking itself for an opportunity missed To 16 April (0131-248 4848). Characters introduce themselves to us, like cold-callers; it may be a naive device, but it's vital, given the amount of doubling here.

The patter is sharp and the most painful situations are truthfully observed in dialogue that penetrates to the heart of the tragic and comic aspects of the saga.As Anna, Raquel Cassidy is compelling, but it is Louise Collins's Kitty who tugs at our heartstrings. She is hopelessly ill-prepared to lead any independent sort of life Not that the men are much better at this game of existence. That Liam Brennan's astutely observed Levin and Paul Blair's sleazy Oblonsky find any common ground is hard to believe. Jamie Lee's Vronsky, quite the assured military man and slightly slippery conqueror of trophy mistresses, might have benefited from an added degree of complexity to his character. Today's saucy burlesquers may wink and shimmy all they like, but, like the society in which sex was a secret, real burlesque is dead.'Burlesque!', Arts Theatre, London WC1 (020-7836 3334), 20 April to 16 July. If Leo Tolstoy could see John Clifford's adaptation of his Anna Karenina, he might be surprised by which characters and what elements Clifford has considered important, and what he has ruthlessly discarded. Within these claustrophobic walls, people's lives are confined, chewed over and crushed; their relationships alternately scrutinised, agonised over and ultimately endured.