... Round the New Shows At the Theatre Dear Octopus (Adelphi) DEAR OCTOPUS wears well, and still clings as closely as ever to public favour. It is, of course, a habit of octopuses, octopi, or octopodes (that 's the right one), to cling. The revival at the Adelphi confirms me in my opinion that the play is a good one, but thin, in that it is sadly lacking in the dramatic element. I do not suggest ...

... The Glass Slipper (St. James's) By Horace Horsnell IT cannot have been merely to avoid con fusion with other seasonable Cinderellas that Herbert and Eleanor Farjeon call their fairy-tale with music by its alternative title, The Glass Slipper. One feels that it was rather to mark differences than to disclaim kinship. The differences are fundamental. Their version amounts to a restoration, a ...

... TU By Herbert Farjeon The Blue Goose (Comedy) IF you want to get the feeling that there isn't a war on and that life in 1941 is pro ceeding just as evenly and calmly as it did (or did it?) ten years ago, a visit to the Comedy Theatre may possibly supply your need. Not that life as depicted in The Blue Goose is appreciably more like life in 1931 than it is now. It isn't. It doesn't nretend to ...

... REVIEWED BY ELIZABETH BOWEN FOR most of us, Germany is a nightmare subject. Instinctively the mind bends back from the picture of devastation, from the unanswered and perhaps unanswerable questions of this defeat. We do not like the odours from the abyss. Germany had it coming to her: well, it has come now. I suppose it would have been impossible, three or four years ago, halfway through the ...

... By Horace Horsnell Rain (St. Martin's) MR. SOMERSET MAUGHAM has a remark able gift for investing fiction with an air of truth. He exercises it, not only in his choice of themes, but in his treatment of them. His best stories seem so credible, their characters so real, that simple readers are persuaded he takes them direct from life. And since his point of view is seldom a soothing one, it is ...

... ELIZABETH BOWEA „g BOOKS A Star Danced 44 flow Small a Part of Time 44 Merchant Airmen 44 44 With a Bare Bodkin 44 Leading Lady A STAR DANCED (W. H. Allen; 10s. 6d.) is Gertrude Lawrence's autobiography. Like everything else she has done, it is distinctive-- even in form, for it darts to and fro in time. We don't begin, for instance, with I was born. We begin with her dash back, by air, ...

... The Banbury Nose (Wyndham's) By Horace Horsnell MR. Peter Ustinov must be getting tired of being told that he is a promising dramatist; but he is promising, if only in the sense that each new play he writes creates lively expectations of the next. He is young, though there is nothing callow about his work. Indeed, the striking thing about it is its maturity. l ne nesuauons or mcxpcncuuc of ...

... By Horace Horsnell Humply Duinpty (Coliseum) Cinderella (His Majesty's) PANTOMIME, like Punch, has never been what it was. The trouble is that, unlike Shakespeare and the Musical Brasses, it is not an acquired taste. Seen in youth, it is usually a case of love at first sight. Once an absolute monarch, as ribald as rollicking, King Panto has become a kind of constitutional cypher, and, like ...

... : Reviewed by Trevor Allen NOVELISTS may hate this war, which destroys literary detachment, slashes royalties, and cuts paper supplies, but they cannot escape it. The Fiction Front widens. Three novels in this batch concern the present eruption, although one, refusing to be intimidated, merely has the laugh on it. I refer with chuckles to Envoy on Excursion (Michael Joseph 8s.), by Caryl ...

... -.1 )l -fjWWVvinf 61 fl l- MENUS MONDAY Mixed Casserole Cauliflower au gratia Mashed Potatoes Ginger Biscuits Jam Pancakes TUESDAY Braised American Pork Cold Meat Cakes Slices of Potato and Carrots and Onions Mixed Vegetable Salad Mixed WEDNESDAY Macaroni Cheese Vegetable Soup Fried Tomatoes Savoury Pancake Steived Apples THURSDAY Salmon Rissoles Consomme Potato Hash Potato and Onion Salad f ...

... : Reviewed by Trevor ^Alleu WHATEVER the limitations on actual travel to-day, there are none on armchair substitutes. about places tumble from the press, and personally I love them, for in prodding the wanderlust they also assuage it-- by proxy. Ann Bridge and Susan Lowndes, jaunt ing off the beaten track in a small car, serve well The Selective Traveller in Portugal (Evans, 21s.), that sunny ...

... : f Reviewed by I 'Trevor Allen I HOW I envy those detached people who can retire with a hefty novel, not only reading every line in a leisurely way, but living in the story and not worrying if it takes a month to finish. Mr. Frank Tilsley's Champion Road (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 12s. 6d.) tells in 700 packed pages of Jonathan Briggs, tough Lanca shire builder, who gets ahead by Jerry and ...