... . By IVOR BROWN. LIFE under the roofs of Paris is generally expected to be full of laughing poverty and love which sheds a tear. In SIXTH FLOOR, adapted by Mr. Rodney Ackland from the French, produced by Mr. Gilbert Miller for a few nights at the St. James's Theatre, we see those supposedly romantic roofs of Montmartre and observe the life which goes on under the tiles, and even, ...

... . By IVOR BROWN. THE snake in the grass is a very old friend. Indeed, he plays the villain in the oldest story of the world. The human serpent turns up in a curious form in THE IN TRUDER, at Wyndham's Theatre. This piece by M. Mauriac, translated by Basil Bartlett, was originally produced (and much liked) at the Gate Theatre under the title of Asmodée. Asr .odeus, as you certainly do not ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. NOVELS in which the narrative is sufficiently organised to be called a plot are more open to charges of improbability than those written on the slice-of-life system. If life is just one damned thing after another, we cannot challenge the logic of events; they may seem unlikely or unnatural in themselves, but not in virtue of their relationship to each other. But a fixed ...

... . THERE is a certain activity in the try out theatres on London's periphery, and for the zealous enthusiast seeking the interest of the unusual and the uncommon, there are the pioneer efforts of The Barn Theatre, at Shere, which has already a good record of successful seasons, and the Tewkesbury players; but in the magic circle of which Shaftesbury Avenue is the centre there are no London ...

... A MUSIC ARTICLE BY EDWIN EVANS. ONE of my re cent experi ences was that of presiding, in a television pro gramme, over the musical equivalent of the popular spell ing bee. The teams were equally divided between amateurs and professionals, and between the sexes. Some of the questions put to them were obviously intended to be a source of innocent merriment. Of the others, some were the musical ...

... . By MICHAEL ORME. THE trouble with a sequel to any suc cessful piece of work is that it is bound to run the gauntlet of comparison. THIS MAN IN PARIS (Plaza), which continues the adventures of the delightful couple, Pat and Simon Drake, whom we got to know in This Man is News, is about as good a sequel as we are likely to meet on the screen. Yet it does betray a slight effort to recapture ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. ADVENTURES of a Young Man is a pan oramic novel with a central figure, Glenn Spots wood, who moves from group to group. In this way we cover a great deal of the American scene, both geo graphically and socially; and anyone who wants to know what conditions among the American working class have been during the past ten years will find Mr. Dos Passos's book most ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. THAT trusty old battle ship of a comedy, Ian Hay's and Ste phen King-Hall's MIDDLE WATCH, turns up again at tne Regal this week, with a new coat of paint, and Tack Buchanan on the bridge. Mr. Buchanan appears as the woman- hating captain of H.M.S. Falcon, who learns, to his complete embarrassment, of the presence of two personable young ladies in his ship after the last ...

... By V. S. Pritchett GEORG KAISER, the German drama tist, is well known outside of Germany as the author of that startling piece of theatre, From Morn Till Midnight. This play showed, with bizarre theatrical effect, how a bank clerk robbed the till in order to satisfy various romantic illusions and ended his course of disappointment by blowing his brains out on a crucifix. Intoxicating symbolism ...

... The Theatre The Women (Lyric) Is it funny? Or is it nauseating? Both, I think, if you do not happen to have been brought up in America. That is to say, there are lines, heaps of lines, and even situations in The Women, Miss Clare Boothe's play brought by an American company to the Lyric Theatre, at which it is hardly possible not to laugh. These lines, these situa tions, ought not to exist, ...

... 44 The 'Ole Phenomenon of Life Bv V. S. Pritchett AFTER reading Mr. St. John Philby's Sheba's Daughters (Methuen; 21s.), which describes his north to south crossing of Arabia, his visit to Shabwa, the hitherto unknown city on the spice road of the Hadhramaut, and his testy quarrels with the British Government officials in Aden, one reflects that all the leading Arabia travellers have been ...

... The Bystander Bookshelf Tales Slick and Powerful By V. S. Pritchett WHAT are the most interesting works of imaginative fiction to-day? The novels? I do not think so. The heart and drive are going out of novel-writing. The chronic novelists are copying one another, or re-writing the novels of the past, and a competent reader can cut them down to a third of their length as his eye runs along the ...