... The Trojan Woman (Lyric, Hammersmith) LOOKING about for a topical play, some thing with an up-to-the-moment theme, the Company of Four have hit upon The Trojan Woman. Nobody can say that they have not found what they were seeking. If you feel like brooding on the ugly, disappointing side of a great military victory, Euripides is still your man. Differences there may oe between 416 B.C. and a ...

... reviewing BOOKS ELIZABETH BOWES Asia CECIL BEATON was sent to India and China by the Ministry of Information to take photographs. The narrative of his journey, Far East, has been published, but only a few of the vast number of pictures taken could be used to illustrate it. Hence it was decided to issue two supplementary volumes, each reproducing about 100 photographs to a large scale Thus ...

... Golden Eagle (Westminster) THE new play is pleasing alike to eye and ear. Costumes designed by Mr. Gower Parks divide the stage into delightful patterns of black and gold, swarthy green, pearl white, and ruby-hearted crimson. To the movement of these colours Mr. Robert Atkins's production imparts a slow grace. The dialogue of Mr. Clifford Bax has leisurely elegance and the incidental music of ...

... Cbfr Ever Since Paradise (New) AS the new Priestley settled into St. Martin's Lane one parching night it raised a dense cloud of adjectives. It was delightful and witty; it was verbose and pretentious and pompous and boring; it was original and affecting. There was never a clearer instance of comedy forced to appeal over the head of critical authority to the decision of the indi vidual taste. ...

... lli/tilu'lh Ho wens IT is seven years-- too many-- since last we had a Nicholas Blake story. Minute for Murder (Crime Club; Collins; 8s. 6d.) signalises the mysterious Mr. Blake's reappear ance. Where has he been? Whatever the answer may be, he has by some means acquired uncanny inside knowledge of a certain wartime Ministry: he has called it the Ministry of Morale. Censorable secrets, I must ...

... Cbb Tfe, Richard II (New Theatre) THIS was certainly the time for the Old Vic to give us the most delicately English of all plays. Seeing the countryside agleam in its verse should be as good as a spring journey through the coloured counties. Shakespeare had a very poor opinion of our forbears, the noble knights and barons bold, who iostled for nosition round hanless Richard's throne. Yet ...

... (bfr I AM in no way 'psychic,' wrote Kipling towards the end of his life. I have seen too much of the evil and sorrow and wreck of good minds on the road to Endor to take one step along that perilous path. Yet some of his ghost stories haunt the memory. Seeing the dubious road from a safe distance, he was in a position to know that the most satisfactory kind of ghost must not satisfy, but ...

... Elizabeth Betvens Creatures of Circumstance Treadmill Leave to Presume the Death The Novel Since 1939 QUITE an interesting study for the sub- historian could be: errors which gave rise to famous false alarms. These, I imagine, would be found to thicken with the approach to our own fortunate day: the type writer must be responsible for many. I advisedly say the typewriter, not the young lady at ...

... Elizabeth Bowetis THE JUDGE'S STORY, by Charles Morgan (Macmillan; 7s. 6d.), is a tale of the conflict of good and evil, deep in its implications but containing not one overtly strong scene. Over-subtlety is, in these days, a charge against writing showing any marked degree of control; but it is not a charge the most inert reader, with a preference for the noisy, could bring here. I share ...

... RECORD DF THE WEEK TWO years ago saxophonist Reggie Goff was playing with the B.B.C. Dance Orchestra. At that time he had no idea of becoming a singer. When he left the B.B.C. however, he took lessons and began to concentrate on his singing, on the advice of a friend. Now his first record has been released here. On it he sings I Don't Care What They Say and When You 're in Lore, accom panied ...

... Elizabeth ftewehs MOUNT IDA, by Monk Gibbon (Cape; 18s.), is a book far from easy to classify-- it is not quite autobiography, not quite novel. Mr. Gibbon has, indeed, forged a form of his own: and why should he not? He is an outstanding Anglo-Irish poet; he is the author of The Seals. Moreover, in Mount Ida he is making a new approach to an ancient subject-- the primary subject, possibly, ...

... At The Theatre Miss Mabel (lluclicss) Anllioiir fookmnn IF we did not know better we should be tempted to speak of Mr. R. C. SherrifF's new play as a delightful instance of beginner's luck. Every thing falls in remarkably well with everything else, apparently by a series of happy accidents. This impression has in fact needed a great deal of care and cunning to create, but there it is. Mr. ...