... Tales of Hoffmann at The Strand ARE you adventurous in your theatre going? If so, here is a new experience which you should be quick to enjoy. If, on the other hand, you are a dyed-in-the- wool operatic conventionalist, then stay away from the Strand Theatre, because George Kirsta's fantastication of the familiar Tales of Hoffman would make you very angry. I he first shock is to find ...

... By Horace Horsnell The Dancing Years (Adelphi) FEW, if any, of what may be called the classic actor-managers had the gift of creating their own raw material. They may have done memorable things with it, but the material came from without. Shakespeare and Molière, it is true, wrote the plays for the companies in which they acted; but they functioned under royal patronage and were not free ...

... By Herbert Farjeon Jam Today (St. Martin's) HERE is a comedy of libel. It begins, improbably, before the play opens with a novelist who, in search of a name, gets it out of a telephone directory, that name being Ilona Benson. As Ilona Benson is married to Hubert Benson, and as they are living together in the same house in Campden Hill, and as she does not seem to be pursuing any career of her ...