ALL the world's a stage, as melancholic Jaques de Boys soliloquised in Shakespeare's As You Like It.

The one man in his time playing many parts is Kevin Tomlinson, who uses Jaques's Seven Ages speech as a springboard for an improvised show built from scratch each performance with masks, a rail of clothes and an imagination and wit as quick as a swallow in flight.

Jaques would have it that all the men and women are merely players, who have their exits and their entrances. In Tomlinson's show, all the men, women and children in the audience are indeed players, writing expressions and exclamations on shreds of paper. Tomlinson will throw these over his head and pick them up at intervals to provide the next line as he progresses from mewling infant to the "second childishness and mere oblivion of death" through this ad-hoc, humorous yet poignant route.

We are also invited to shout out suggestions of locations, occupations and plot development and provide props as the chameleon Tomlinson takes on characters from each age - and even a badger Two men and one woman picked from the audience also have their exits and their entrances on stage, blossoming under Tomlinson's gentle handling. Student John pulls on a rough wig to play deadpan mother to Tomlinson's wilful young boy; Kate, from the theatre staff, warms to the role of a nun in the heat of Forbidden Passion; and Boro fan big Steve answers yes or no with a horn and a bell as Tomlinson plays his father. What Steve reveals about his childhood would make a story in itself, affirming that all human life is here and death too in a finale where Tomlinson so delicately balances pathos, sadness and solace. Whatever your age, see Seven Ages.