"My friends want to see a musical but I've already seen Cats and Phantom."Lesley Ferris (51), Martina Mai (10) and Phoebe Ferris (15)Lesley, from Columbus, Ohio, is here with her daughter and her daughter's friend from Italy. Ms Ferris, who has lived in London and gave birth to Phoebe here, is queueing for tickets to Beauty and the Beast The trip is "to indulge Martina". In the last month alone, Lesley has queued here six times.Jill Trowbridge (30) and Debbie Eastwood (49)Jill, from Columbus, Ohio, and Debbie from Phoenix, Arizona, met two years ago at work. They are in London for a week and tonight they hope to see Rent, although Jill's already seen it. "Last year I got cheap seats up in the balcony, so I want to get a bit closer as it was fantastic and energising."John Chaney and Anne Chaney (both in their fifties)John and Anne are here from Florida for a week's holiday. They're aiming to get tickets or Hay Fever, or maybe Whistle Down The Wind.

Says Anne: "We like musicals and concerts, we don't normally go in for serious drama." John says: "That goes for me too."Emma Barnsley (19) and her sister Caroline (18)Emma has come from Lytham, near Blackpool, with her family to receive her Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award. They're still arguing whether to see West Side Story or Starlight Express "We've been to musicals quite a few times," says Emma "Phantom was my favourite. It was so dramatic."Phil Owen (34)Phil is a chartered surveyor who works nearby and goes to the theatre in London about once every two months The last play he saw was Art. Today, he's trying to get tickets for David Hare's Plenty, starring Cate Blanchett. "It's the last week of the play, so that's why I'm here," he says n. hen architect Frank Gehry hits town, the place is never the same again Not only does the skyline change.

Fame and fortune follow in his slipstream, even in nowheresville Take Weil-am-Rhein near the Swiss border in Germany. His chair museum next to the Vitra chair factory pulls four architectural tour parties every day, 10 years after it opened. Or Bilbao, where Gehry turned a down-at-heel town into an international destination. More curvaceous than a supermodel and taking as many photocalls, the Guggenheim, sculpted in tensile titanium, made Frank Gehry a household name, even in Britain where we have been slow to recognise his pulling power. Not for want of trying, on Gehry's part - he is still grouchy about losing the commission to design a millennium bridge over the Thames to Norman Foster, and the new Tate Gallery at Bankside to the Swiss duo of Herzog & de Meuron. Now the architect who can command silly money for his signature on a building has waived his fees to design his first in Britain, a small, low-budget cancer care centre in Dundee, in honour of his friend, Maggie Keswick Jencks, who died of cancer in 1996.

The first Maggie's Centre cancer care unit, by architect Richard Murphy, opened in Edinburgh in 1997, inspired by her vision of better quality care and support for patients and their families as they dealt with the disease. Neither hospice nor hospital, these centres are designed to complement orthodox treatments - symbolised in Dundee by a Gehry bridge over a man-made lake, linking the Maggie's Centre to Ninewells Hospital. At the Dundee Contemporary Arts Centre (also designed by Murphy), sketches and models of the cancer centre are on show, along with profiles of other Gehry landmarks. Gehry's first sketches for his buildings are deceptively like doodles. He then likes to flesh out his ideas with building blocks - the legacy of a childhood spent playing with them on his grandmother's verandah in Toronto. Sketches become piles of blocks which are stacked, skewed, split and coloured on tracing-paper sites. Then his studio assembles models, which constantly change size, in paper and cellophane, or in spiralling balsa wood These models are tools, not iconic objects Finally they are transferred to a computer. Bits of chain-mail, perforated wire mesh and titanium lying about the exhibition illustrate Gehry's fascination with finding the right membrane to contain his genius.'Frank O Gehry: The Architect's Studio' is at the Dundee Contemporary Arts Centre, 152 Nethergate, Dundee, until 29 AugustMaggie's Centre, DundeeThe Maggie's Cancer Care Centre in Dundee will be built next year.