WHY are present-day stage productions so visually unsatisfying? Recent visits to the Malvern Festival Theatre, where I saw plays performed in front of minimalist scenery, have confirmed this view.

Yes, I am aware that imaginative lighting can enhance or replace elaborate settings, but even this was denied us in a recent production of The Three Sisters, which was acted out on a bare stage with a few chairs, a table and a costume hamper as props. Speaking of costumes, why not dispense with these, too, and dress the actors in sweat-shirts and jeans?

Where are the great stage designers of the past, whose creations often received a round of applause when the curtain rose? Fifty years ago I welcomed the exhilarating changes taking place in the theatre, which saw the demise of drawing room comedy and the appearance of exciting new writers and directors. But haven't we travelled too far along the road of Brechtian starkness? Please let us have something for our impoverished eyes to take delight in.

JAMES FIELDING, Kempley Green, Dymock.