... 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 ...

... ARTIE BAKER first came into prominence when he understudied Artie Shaw from 1940 to 1942. Later he played with Raymond Scott's band and recently he has been a soloist in the Perry Como radio programme. Now, on the first record of his Salon Swingtet to be released in Britain, he plays two of his own compositions, Platter Chatter Jump and Microphonics. The first features himself and his pianist ...

... (bfr Sit Down a Minute, Adrian Comedy Anthony Cookman with THIS is not a bad example of the genteel farce now much in fashion. It is as clean as a whistle, with as few notes. Plautus and Shakespeare, those shameless revellers in the fun of mistaken identity and stage hullaballoo, might have wondered what it was all about. Comic the mistakes, no doubt, but how lightly comic the penalties ...

... Elizabeth Bewetts Charade Shaplon Affairs Turnstile One The Voice of the Corpse lteprints CHARADE (The Bodley Head; 7s. 6 d.) is John Mortimer's first novel-- or is it? I find no reference on the wrapper or first inside page to any other work of fiction by him yet Charade is written with such assurance that it is hard to see Mr. Mortimer as a new comer. Perhaps, however, this signalises ...

... REC0Hg DF THE WEEK TASMANIAN-BORN Margherita Grandi obviously inherited her ability to sing and her amazing dramatic powers from her Italian and Irish parents. Many of you will remember her singing at Glyndebourne prior to 1939, and in the years that have passed since then her voice has matured and has now an intensity which she controls with genuine artistry and restraint. Last year she was ...