... by Cyril Butcher I J CONFORMING to the current passion for exhibitions, the B.B.C.'s Research Station at Kingswood Warren has also recently put itself on show. So once again we found ourselves in this astonishing world of electrons, pieces of wire and radio valves. It is housed mainly in a pseudo-baronial mansion of considerable ugliness, set in beautiful grounds, with well-kept flower-beds, ...

... AT THE THEATRE.. ..with J. C. TREWIN First Choice A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM (Old Vic FIRST choice, yes: the Dream, surely, must always be that, whenever it is revived. But I am not persuaded that we shall think in future of this mid-winter production as our first choice from revivals of the last decade. Something is wrong now with the spirit of the Athenian wood at the Old Vic. The wood is not ...

... The Prince and Petronella The Prince and Petronella By John Brophy. (Ghatto and Windus; 8s! 6d.) This lhatto and Windus; 8s! fid.) this short and entertaining trifle concerns a Prince, a little monarchy with a Casino, and a beautiful girl. Coincidence ends there. The bank has been broken, the State is broke, the Prince turns resource fully to dustbins as a possible source of national revenue, ...

... Fear is the Same By Garter Dickson. (Heinemann 15s.) The time is the late eighteenth century; the place, a house appropriately sited off Berkeley Square. Jennifer Baird meets Philip, Lord Glenarvon but surely not for the first time Haven't they known each other in the tiventieth century Wasn't he something to do with boxing and with being a scholar, too, and wasn't she an actress It is all ...

... . By Alfred Hayes. Gollancz 9s.) THIS also consists of a number of stories welded together to make a novel, but unlike those of The Winnowing Years they are happening at the same time as well as in the same place, which in this case is Rome. But here, too, there is a unity about the book, an effect of completeness, which saves it from the disjoin tedness which might have been inherent in its ...

... (d)ur cJjooLlielf TO THE WOOD NO MORE. By Ernest Raymond. (Cassell and Co., Ltd. 12s. 6 d.) CHILDREN IN THE HOUSE. By Nan Fairbrother. (The Hogarth Press 12s. bd.) SET ALL AFIRE. By Louis de Wohl. (Victor Collancz, Ltd. 12s. bd.) Reviewed by G. B. Stern POSSIBLY Mr. Ernest Raymond would call his recherche du temps perdu, set in St. John's Wood during the mellow days of King Edward VII., a ...

... (c j l (d j V^unouser ana /uriouser 1 with J. C. TREW1N The Private Secretary {Arts) Charley's Aunt {Nexe) IF Charley is your darling you will find him, remarkably spruce, at the New Theatre, where he has succeeded Dear Charles (it is all, like the farce, a little confusing). At the Arts, thirty seconds' scamper away, you will see Mr. Cattermole lifting the Reverend Robert Spalding by the seat ...

... CINEMA RECENT PRODUCTIONS STAGE STRUCK (on release) is a new version of Morning Glory, the film that won stardom and an Oscar for Katharine Hepburn twenty- five years ago. Today it seems likely to do the same for nineteen-year-old Susan Strasberg, the girl who played Anne Frank in New York and Kim Novak's kid sister in Hollywood's Picnic. It tells the old story of little Miss Nobody from the ...

... THEATRE RECENT PRODUCTIONS THE MOSCOW ART THEATRE (Sadler's Wells) offers one of the most extraordinary experiences within the average playgoer's memory. I don't understand Russian, but I have long known the wistful magic of Chekhov; and' those two great plays, The Cherry Orchard and The Three Sisters, and a slightly lesser one, Uncle Vanya, have never been more magical than they are at the ...

... SYLVIA AND THE GHOST. Jacques Xati (of Jour de Fete) and the enchanting little actress Odette Joyeux in a creamy, foamy wisp of a fantasy about a very young girl with a schwdrmerei for a family ghost, who falls really in love, at her first ball, with one of the ghost's impersonators. THE FURIES. Barbara Stanwyck and Walter Huston make no bone's about exposing the uglier side of a father ...

... The Prisoner (Globe) WITHIN the mediaeval castle that is now a prison, we listen in vain for any sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. This, in its European capital, is the home of mental torture. A Cardinal, once a hero of the Resistance, must be softened. Another resistance must be worn down he must be made to say whatever the Government wishes him to say. So we have the ...

... Knock on Wood (Plaza).-- A story of no great consequence about an American ventriloquist who gets accidentally mixed up with a European spy-ring gives Danny Kaye a chance for a number of lively turns. The best is his impersonation of a very English motor salesman demonstrating a very complicated car, but you 'll enjoy the burlesque of ballet, too. Mai Zetterling plays opposite him in her first ...