Many of the groups have continued their activities, despite the war situation, meeting in the relative safety of underground cellars.”These include the Camarad Music and Folk Dance Group, Jelka’s Music and Painting Club, Apeiron, who are interested in fine arts, installations, mixed media and literature, and Suad’s Club, who are planning a photography course alongside teaching music and keyboard skills. “It’s interesting to see that music is the common thread running through this cultural regeneration process,” says Osborne, “and I think the musical world has a particular duty and role to play in this revival.”For Osborne, the Mostar project is the latest example of his tireless commitment to cultural life in Bosnia. In 1992, he played in the front line in Sarajevo with Bosnian cellist Vedran Smailovic. Last summer his opera, Sarajevo was performed at the South Bank in London, and in February he wrote the opera Europe, which opened the Sarajevo Winter Festival. He has also run several children’s projects in Sarajevo.Some might argue that providing food for Bosnians is more important than musical initiatives.

However, Osborne maintains that with much of the humanitarian effort failing, cultural initiatives, which are very highly valued by local communities, can have a high success rate: “While other aid is a double-edged weapon, there is no way anyone can demand 50 per cent of what I do A human resource cannot be divided. This work is my personal commitment to what is perhaps the most valuable key to society in Europe, to a multi-cultural society of high cultural standards and interests. Culture is an important glue for Bosnian people, putting something positive, creative and visionary in a place where there is a lot of despair and suffering, and supporting optimism in a context of mayhem.”n War Child, 7-12 Greenland Street, London NW1 (0171-916 9276). Next War Child fund-raiser is a concert by Steeleye Span at Forum, London, NW5 on 2 Sept (0171-284 2200).

After the tawdry debacle of Eurovision (the gay musical that scored nul points in all categories) the idea of using the world’s naffest of songfests as the context for another homosexual comedy might have seemed about as propitious a ploy as, ooh, building a pleasure cruiser and christening it the Titanic, or deciding to set a new soap opera in Spain. Jonathan Harvey’s Boom Bang-a-Bang at The Bush serenely soars over such superstitions. I have to admit that the news that his latest play was going to be set at a Kentish Town Eurovision Night party chez the kind of gay buffs who make a point of knowing their “Ding Dang Dong” from their “Ding-a-Dong” filled me with foreboding for a different reason. Harvey, still in his twenties, has just about the most natural ear for authentic- sounding comic dialogue of anyone of his generation. But with his two previous hits, you sometimes felt that the buckets of Scouse charm and the slightly coercive party atmosphere were failing to conceal an uncertainty about the issues raised (particularly in the attempted rape scene in Babies). Boom Bang-a-Bang sounded as though it would scarcely discourage these evasive tendencies.
Instead, it marks a marvellous leap forward in Harvey’s art It’s a delight, but a delight with real bite.

At one point, a charcter emerges from a long session on the loo bearing a copy of My Night With Reg. An in-jokey touch, but from the evidence of Boom Bang-a-Bang, you might suspect that Harvey also keeps a well-thumbed edition of Abigail’s Party in his bathroom. Indeed, resentful, treacherous Steph (Gary Love), all officious false concern and snide confidentiality, seems to have dedicated his life to a round-the-clock impersonation of Alison Steadman’s immortal Beverley from that play.The Kentish Town party is significant for its absentees. Since their last Eurovision thrash, the lover of the host, Lee (Chris Hargreaves) has died. Of a brain tumour, not AIDS as it happens, although it seems that many of the couple’s gay friends, who have decamped to an alternative party this year, think that diagnosis a hypocritical cover-up.

Hence, to Steph’s waspish annoyance, the undue number of straight guests at Lee’s do.No, make that ’straight’ guests, for as the evening wears on, television sets blow up and conventional sexual categories are blown apart.Director Kathy Burke and a brilliant cast do handsome justice to a play that combines farcical hilarity (such as the moment when Francis Lee’s wonderful Roy drops some ecstasy and becomes disastrously indiscreet as he loses all his previous knotted anxieties), gimlet-eyed observation of gay sub-culture (watch out in the Oxford Street Top Shop), and a plot that intelligently exposes the limitations of gender stereotypes and sexual pigeon-holing – how it can make seemingly perfect sense, say, for Jane Hazlegrove’s aggrieved Wendy to tell her female lover: “You’re a man You do the same sort of things men do. Fuck women up.” Or for straight Nick (Karl Draper) to feel wistfully that he would be better off in a relationship with Lee than with his partner. The play rattles open compartments without making the simplistic suggestion that everybody is “really” gay. Still ridiculously young and talented, Jonathan Harvey is now becoming seriously good.n To 19 Aug (Booking: 0181-743 2223). Veni, Creator Spiritus – “Come, Creator Spirit”, or rather “Come, Creative Spirit”.