... Playbill Looks at the Shows Escort (Lyric) SIR PATRICK HASTINGS'S drama of the Royal Navy in wartime, Escort, is by no means plain sailing. No doubt that is as it should be, for purposes of realism. But Sir Patrick has complicated matters owing to a professional urge to graft police-court cross-examina tion stuff on to ward-room routine. The other play of the dangers of life at sea these ...

... Emily, Duchess of Leinster Hrud of u Traveller Death Be Mot Proud In the East My Pleasure Elizabeth Bewen's EMILY DUCHESS OF LEINSTER, 1731-1814: A Study of Her Life and Times (Staples Press; 15s.) is the work of Brian Fitz- Gerald, one of the lady's descendants. Mr. FitzGerald, as author, is at a further advantage: in addition to knowing the background of which he writes, he is in the ...

... (A Hui By James Agate Which Eve BE sure oi this, reader, that when the cinema says Eve it means the Eve not of Mr. Shaw but of Mr. Shakespeare. Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives. I will be more jealous of thee than a Barbary cock- pigeon over his hen, more clamorous than a parrot against rain, more new-fangled than an ape, more giddy in my desires than ...

... By Herbert Farjeon Sadler's Wells Ballet (New Theatre) IN these barbaric days (or are there still people who maintain that the world progresses?), a little culture is a great consolation. If humanity must fight for its life when the guns get going, so, no less tenaciously, must art. And in a country that regards it as a wanton waste of money to spend one governmental penny on the theatre in ...

... A Doll's House (Winter Garden) YES, another revival, but the more revivals that are forced upon us the more certain are we of one thing-- that storytelling will carry the preaching long after the preach ing has grown musty. (It would be by no means surprising if Pinero, who was on intimate terms with a vanished society, should one day catch the ear of an entirely different set of people ...

... At The Theatre IS itli Bliitton Shoes'* (London Hippodrome) Audi onr ('ookinuii To drag in comparisons with Oklahoma! and Annie Get Your Gun is not quite fair. These pieces were revolutionary in the sense that both had something definite to say and said it in a way that seemed delight fully fresh because the music and the dancing and the humour were all to the point. They hinted at the ...

... At The Pictures Accoi'tling to tlic Book Yoiuigiiinii Carter TAKE twenty- four British actors of dis tinction. add one Continental star, a well-known pro ducer, two directors, two writers, the bones of one play, and assorted tech nicians, place in a comfortable English setting and allow to simmer gently. When ready, cut and assemble, adding symphony orchestra to taste. Is this the ideal recipe ...

... (tt 1&L- You Never Co Tc (Wyndham'a) IF we can make no very notable gaiety for ourselves (and that is how things are in the theatre today), we must of course look for it where it can be found, and there is always the early Shaw. You Never Can Tell, written at the close of the century with a quizzical eye cocked at the box office, is just the thing. It has not been too often revived, and it is, ...

... Elizabeth Bmven s WHATEVER else we may lack, now the days draw in, this autumn's publishing season is bringing us an unusual number of good novels. The last few years have obviously not been easy for the inventive writer: fact has outbidden fancy all along the line. Also, for the novelist two things are necessary-- a sense of values, however personal, and perspective. Everything has been ...

... BOOK REVIEWS The Scarlet Tree The River Old Marylebone and Some of Its Famous People ELIZABETH BOWEAS THE SCARLET TREE (Macmillan; 15S. ) is the second volume of Sir Osbert Sit well's autobiography-- which as an entire work is to bear the name the author gave the first volume, Left Hand, Right Hand! The idea implicit in that title informs, and con tinues to architect, this present further ...

... ''Peer Gynt (New) By Horace Horsnell MASTERPIECES of art that, for one reason or another, are not quite themselves present teasing problems. The world is littered with them. They range from the surviving fragments of Sappho's verse to the battered grimace of the tourist-haunted Sphinx. Here we have Ibsen's Peer Gynt, a dramatic fantasy written in 1867. This long episodic poem comes to us ...

... Sweet Yesterday (Adelplii) A MUSICAL romance does well to be shame lessly romantic. Nobody will complain because the hero of this piece not only delivers French Royalists from Napoleon's prisons after the manner of the Scarlet Pim pernel in the days of the Revolution, but is also the spy who made Trafalgar possible and has himself an affair of the heart which brings him in fine operatic style ...