... Cafe Debris MOST of my colleagues seem to have loathed Caf£ Debris at the Round House Downstairs with an all-but inexpressible repugnance. Perhaps it was just that it had tidied itself up a bit by the end of the week, but there was a certain style to this nightmare and surreal vision which made it good theatre. Michael' Matou devised, designed and directed the show which has music by Martin ...

... Open space season THE OPEN SPACE has lined up a new season which includes two new American comedies, The Ball Game, by Tom Thomas, directed by John Fortune, and Boo Hoo, by Philip Magdalany, directed by Charles Marowitz, a new adaptation by Charles Marowitz of Hedda Gabler, Brecht's comedy A Res pectable Marriage, directed by Mike Ockrent, and Ben Jonson's The Silent Woman, adapted ...

... THE SNOB THE BUBBLE Theatre Company may find that it has lost a number of followers after its latest production, a drama by Carl Sternheim called The Snob. Not that it is a bad play it is certainly interesting as a study of characters and their development. But the company did not appear to have either the actors or the director to tackle it. Presentation, on an open stage, was over-stylised ...

... THE DIVINE FLAME MUSICAL appetite can often be whetted by the aperitif of biographical information. You can. of course, get this over in the form of a programme note; most promoters do just that. You can also (and this is surely a recipe to attract music club oooiters eagy aooui a puieiumi piu- gramme of so-called difficult music or a composer whose name is some thing less than a household ...

... BRIAN AND VIV HAVE NEVER HAD SEX IF THE term had not already been pre-empted to mean something quite different, the best description of Brian and Viv Have Never Had Sex at the Round House Downstairs could well have been audio visual. Liz Goodall, Steve McCabe and Alison Stewart -Richardson have created a sort of rock opera around the fifties into sixties novelettish boy-and-girl story ...

... CAST OFF DAVID CREGAN is one of the writers particularly associated with Richmond Fringe Theatre at the Orange Tree. His latest play has 14 characters, although Sam Walters directs Cast Off very happily with only five players. It is what one might call a tragic farce-- farcical because it sends up rotten bureau cracy, big business, do-gooding and any number of sacred cows of for mula ...

... 'STRAWBERRY FIELDS' AT THE COTTESLOE Opened April 5 LIKE. tne Beatles song from which it takes its title, Stephen Poliakoff's new play is about a dream, a dream of an England free from motorways (and, even more important, motorway service areas), redevelopment schemes and high-rise flats. But whereas the Beatles sang about the psychedelic sixties, Poliakoff is a young man of the sordid ...

... LIVERPOOL 'THE CANTRIL TALES' LAST CHRISTMAS the Everyman gave their version of the Canterbury Tales. This year, six living authors, all Liverpool born or based, answer back with The Cantril Tales, named after a fairly new suburban housing estate. No less bawdy (in fact, a good deal more so) than Chaucer, the tales are set up to enliven the Scabby Inn thereby involving the Company in a ...

... DUBLIN PERHAPS the biggest competition that anyone writing directly about the North of Ireland has is the consistency of treatment in television and newspapers. How to present dramatically what is already presented with all the media resources of immediacy? How to compete dramatically with what is daily stark drama, already Theatre of the Absurd? With a first play, Eight Jumps and A Pair ...

... 'ENTERTAINING MR SLOANE' R.B. MARRIOTT REVIEWS Opened April 1 7 SO FAR as the play was concerned, the Joe Orton season at the Royal Court started very well, with Entertaining Mr Sloane. which, at the Arts, was both acclaimed and dismissed in 1964. There are some excellent performances at the Court, by Beryl Reid as Kath, Malcolm McDowell as Sloane and Ronald Fraser as Ed. But the ...

... GREENWICH 'THE BORAGE PIGEON AFFAIR' Opened May 14 THE REPUTATION of James Saunders, fostered a few years ago by Next Time I'll Sing to You and A Scent of Flowers, has not so far been greatly enhanced by the Charades season at Greenwich, which opened with his revision and completion of Vanbrugh's A ney to uondon in wnicn an ine uesi bits are Vanbrugh's. and now The Borage Pigeon ...

... The Memorandum RICHMOND FRINGE VACLAV HAVEL'S The Memorandum is both a biting satire on bureaucracy and its gobbledygook and on the politically repressive society of the playwright's own country, Czechoslovakia. Richmond Fringe presented it at the Orange Tree in a translation by Vera well. well directed by iam waiters; a petition for Havel's release from the prison in which he has been ...