... 44 Whispering: Ilill 44 Blood Money 44 British Hospitals 44 The Bedside Shakespeare Elizabeth Betvens WHETHER in drama or fiction, one theme never seems to exhaust itself-- the pos sessive mother! One must, I fear, take it that this lady is no less operative in real life-- why else should her wiles be followed, by suc cessions of audiences, by thousands of readers, with such fascinated, almost ...

... At The Theatre Home Is To-morrow (Cambridge) Antlionr Cookman MR. PRIESTLEY is the H. G. Wells of the theatre. His admirers want him to go on writing about people. Perversely, to their thinking, he fixes his eye on peoples. Wells left the recognizable human world of Mr. Lewisham, Uncle Ponderevo and Mr. Polly for the arid mind (which he called a world) of William Clissold. Mr. Priestley, ...

... At The Pictures Songs of the Rope Freda Bruce Lockliart HITCHCOCK'S much-heralded and technically revolutionary Rope (Carlton) and Have- lock-Allan's gentler The Small Voice (Plaza) have a number of points in common. Both, for a start, are excellently entertaining pictures. Both give opportunities to young players who rise to them Joan Chandler in Rope James Donald and Harold Keel (late of ...

... Elizabeth Hewens The Conspirator Maidens' Trip Taken at the Flood The Best of Beardsley THE CONSPIRATOR, a novel by Humphrey Slater (John Lehmann; 8s. 6d.), is described on its wrapper as having a new and startling theme. This is no over statement: we are to deal, in fact, with the fortunes, marriage and general outlook of Major Desmond Ferneaux-Lightfoot, Grenadier Guards, who is ...

... cut tii ytujcu A la Carte (Savoy) Anthony Cookman with Tom Titt APPARENTLY it is in the nature of things that the final editing of a little revue gets left to the first-night audience. None of the many cooks authors, composers, designers, choreographers can be sure what will be the effect of certain items in the menu. They can cook, but they cannot taste. They require the services of an ...

... Elizabeth Bewehs The Ides of Summer Attic and Area Acres and Pains The Englishman's Home The Governess at Ashburton Hall Aights at the Opera ARE there-- can there really be-- characters who are precipitators of other people's doom, carriers, in the illness sense, of misfortune? Plane and railway accidents, large-scale fatalities such as earthquakes and fires would, if so, follow in such a ...

... ctk tfcu Royal Circle (Wyndham 's J AUDIENCES so dumb that they will not venture to say Boo! to the veriest goose of a play offend sticklers for the rigour of the theatrical game. Hisses are hideous sounds, but they betoken a healthy spirit of discrimination. So runs the virilist argument, plausibly enough; yet in my experience the mere goose stands in less danger of noisy disapprobation ...

... CUt Remember Mama (Aldwycli) The Shoemaker's Holiday (O.U.D.S.) IT is hard to forgive Mr. Van Druten. He has put all his professional cunning at the service of a little story which plays unscrupulously on our most sacred emotions. We are asked to remember Mama-- and to grow weepsy as our enchanted memories of childhood reveal her unfailing goodness. It is Mama as we should remember her if ...

... At The Pictures (■la morons Legend Freda Bruee Loekliart IN our age the word glamour has taken on a cupro-nickel tone. But have we another to describe the mysterious magic which rare people shed about them as they go, the sheen on their own personalities, the spell they cast on others? If I were playing one of those paper games which used to pass the family time, and were asked to name the ...

... Elizabeth Bewehs GREAT MORNING (Macmillan; 15s.) is the third volume of Sir Osbert Sitwell's autobiography. Following upon Left Hand, Right Hand! and The Scarlet Tree, the announcement of its appearance has been awaited as might be the sounding of a gong before yet another superb meal. This is a book to be opened with a salivary eagerness it will not disappoint. In autobiography our age has ...

... r\ER HIRT AUF DEM FELSEN was written in October 1828, the last year of Schubert's life. Anna Milder-Hauptmann,. a famous singer of that period, asked him to compose a song for her so that she could display her voice. A clarinet obbligato was set down as further embellishment to the voice, and it is thought that Schubert had a particular clarinet player in mind when scoring this. Be that as it ...

... Anthony Cook man and Flowers for the Living'''' (New Lindsey) STARK and Zola-esque are words that have been used to describe this drama of an East End slum. Though used in a complimentary sense, they may give an unduly forbidding impression of Miss Toni Block's quite remarkable talent for representing squalor faithfully yet amusingly. Things are pretty bad in the Holmes' kitchen, but the ...