... Chicken Every Sunday (Savoy) IT is a sobering reflection for those who make light of national differences that the airiest trifles when put to the test are found to have their roots deep in the soil of a particular country. We all know that while on one side of the English Channel Racine is despised and Shakespeare worshipped, on the other Shake speare is tolerated and Racine adored, but here ...

... Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE 'T'HE HASTY HEART (Aldwych).-- It was strange to find laughter and laughter of the right sort predominating in a play whose chief character is a man so seriously ill that he is given by the doctor only a few weeks to live. And the sole scene is a hospital, too (though I have heard plenty of laughter in hospitals). But in this case it is a war hospital somewhere in Burma ...

... JN 1934 Mr- J- B. Priestley published English Journey a book which, in English social history, ranks in import ance with Cobbett's Rural Rides. In 1940 Mr. Priestley made some broadcasts, the effect of which on the population of these islands, and indeed upon the whole world, can only properly be assessed when the complete history of the war comes to be written. THREE HEN IN NEW SUITS ...

... Mr. Eric Gillett has edited Miss Ham's diary, which covers a period from 1783 to 1820, her childhood in Dorset, and her young womanhood there and in Ireland, where she lived for six years and acquired quite an Irish accent and became accustomed to Irish manners. So good were these last, particularly among the ALTHOUGH written in novel form, ISLAND IN THE SKY (Michael Joseph. 8s. 6d.) is ...

... books: Reviewed by Trevor Allen GREAT boys are the Japs in China! They had a master plan drawn up in Tokyo for backward cities like Sungkiang. There should be lovely broad roads! They made them by ripping through bedrooms, kitchens, court yards without compensating the owners. There should also be a new canal! They dug it by grabbing every able-bodied man they saw and giving him a bowl of rice ...

... : Reviewed by Trevor lien NO man, they say, is' a hero to his valet: To his cousin, Mrs. Clare Sheridan-- when she sculpted his head at morning bedside sittings at 10 Downing Street-- Mr. Winston Churchill was the Hogarthian figure with cigar and spectacles, patting a hot-water bottle affec tionately, and, incidentally, twiddling his toes under the bed clothes to amuse a black Persian to ...

... Perchance To Dream (London Hippodrome) MR. IVOR NOVELLO has become our No. 1 specialist in stage glamour. Give him a great stage and where is his rival in the gentle art of packing it with glamour and nothing but glamour? Emulators may be imagined losing their nerve when they notice that inspiration is running short of wit. They have not the secret of Mr. Novello's formula. He dispenses ...

... The Rivals (Criterion) THE Criterion Theatre, which served during the war as a B.B.C. studio, has been released, and it is pleasant to enjoy once more the sensation of sitting inside a dainty chocolate box. Much less pleasant to wonder uneasily if the opening production will send many away under the impression (never perhaps to be obliterated) that The Rivals is a poor play. Sheridan's first ...

... Shakespeare in Regents Park PEOPLE who have shared danger together are naturally something of a mutual admiration society, and there was a special note of intimate warmth in the welcome given to Mr. Robert Atkins and his Bankside Players on their return this summer to the greensward stage in Regents Park. It could not be forgotten so soon that while the flying bombs were falling audiences ...

... /re/ie (His Majesty's) MR. JACK HYLTON must have known that the success of his revival of Irene could by no means be taken for granted. In 1920 the piece went with a swing-- a good long swing-- for several reasons that no longer count. In the first place, it introduced a new actress from America, Miss Edith Day. Her triumph as the Alice Blue Gown girl was freely compared with the ...

... Emma (St. James's) By Horace Horsnell IT would be interesting to know what Miss Austen herself would have made of this resplendent dramatization of her famous novel. Her public comment might have been modest, deprecating the enlargement of that little strip of ivory on which she stippled her fascinating studies of nubility. Her private opinion, confided to her sister Cassandra, would have ...

... Henry IV Part One (New) IN the last four or five years there have been some mighty fine revivals to beguile the sad time, but here is one which excels them all on three main counts --individual brilliance, satisfying team work and firm direction. Of the Falstaff it may be roundly said that nobody has in our time played the fat immortal so well as Mr. Ralph Richardson; and of Harry Hotspur ...