... 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 ...

... Murder on the Nile (Ambassadors) CROSSWORD puzzles are rarely notable for a suggestion of warm humanity or for their humorousness. They succeed none the less in corrugating the brows and passing the time of a great public; and the new Agatha Christie play, though the characters are only walking clues changing colour as effortlessly as a chameleon and there is little incidental fun, is ...

... Better Late (Garrick) MISS BEATRICE LILLIE is, we know, a show in herself, and during the first half of this revue that is just as well for all concerned. But for her presence and the final burlesque the audience might use the interval to melt away murmuring as they went, Better Never! It is really a long time since so much comic talent was used to so little purpose. The author has certainly ...

... Frieda (Westminster) MR. RONALD MILLAR, a young playwright who is already a dab hand at domestic drama, has a quick eye for a topical theme. In Zero Hour, which imagined what D-Day would be like, he got in just ahead of General Eisenhower but with too small a margin, and no anticipation, however intel ligent, could stand comparison with the event itself. His eye has pounced this time on a ...

... Note The Day Is Over (Embassy) IF he is not more careful Mr. Terence de Marney will soon be our First Murderer. Whether tweeded for the coverts as a rich man's favourite nephew or (as now) collarless at breakfast as Auntie B.'s favourite lodger there is a gleam in his eye that marks him out instantly as a public menace. Cheerful Charlie, that's me, he says with disarming intent, but his ...

... 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 ...

... BOOKS ELIZABETH KOWEIt A History of Trinity College, Dublin T.C.D. A HISTORY OF TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN: 1591-1892 (Dublin University Press; 15s.), is the work of Constantia Maxwell. Lecky Professor of Modern History at the University of which she writes. This book adds to our ever-increasing debt to Professor Maxwell --to her humane and friendly interest in general life, to her power of ...

... The Glass Slipper (St. James's) Peter Pan (Scala) To the vast pantomime public in the West End, a brace of pantomimes is scarcely the equivalent of half a turkey to a swarming Victorian family. Children, fortunately, fare better. Those too ripe in experience for the simple nursery frolics of The Land of the Christmas Stocking can make do handsomely with what the Farieons and Barrie give ...

... BOOK REVIEWS ELIZABETH BOWES S MWM ON BOORS They Went to Portugal Diversion House Under Mars Uninvited Guests Is civilisation really on the decline? We have fought to preserve it: now that we look round there might seem, at the first glance, to be remarkably little left. We are confronted by dilapidation (more depressing, because subtler in its effects, than out-and-out ruin), bv long, heart ...

... Article Film Critic JAMES AGATE resumes his HOME-KEEPING Englander that you are, reader dear, what picture do you make to yourself of Provence? A romantic mise en scène of Tennysonian retreats, where never wind blows loudly-- shades of the mistral and sirocco!-- and where poppy, lotus, and mandragora are the staple fare? A land something more westerly in temper than our own West Country, a ...

... ELIZABETH BOWES S Fanfare for Elizabeth Pipe Night Death and the Pleasant Voices Pandora FANFARE FOR ELIZABETH, by Edith Sit well (Macmillan; 12s. 6d.), is something far rarer than a biography. It is a poetic interpretation of the mind of the girl-child and, later, young girl who was in time to become Queen Elizabeth-- that brilliant, daunting and cryptic sixteenth-century figure, one of the ...

... The Winslow Boy (Lyric) IT is with the liveliest anticipation that one goes to a new Terence Rattigan. He alone among the young men has the trick (now exhibited four times in succession) of writing plays that run for years, and though the great cause of Drama has not so far benefited to any notable extent, one always hopes it may. Even when he is plainly content only to serve that other ...