... EMLYN WILLIAMS AS CHARLES DICKENS R. B. MARRIOTT REVIEWS Opened February 4 IT IS almost a quarter of a century since Emlyn Williams first appeared in his solo performance as Charles Dickens reading from his novels. Since then he has taken the performance to many parts of the world and made several West F.nd appearances. He turns up again, at the Haymarket. with F.mlyn Williams as Charles ...

... ALDWYCH, 'TWELFTH NIGHT' Opened February 5 AN AIR of innocent ambivalence pervades the Royal Shakespeare Company production of Twelfth Night. It is set in a real dream world, in which the natives are a hotch-potch of national types and costumes. part-Italian, part-Greek, even, in the decor, a touch of Hungarian. The one thing they are not is English, Sir Toby Belch, for instance, being ...

... LIVERPOOL 'FUNNY PECULIAR' MIKE STOTT'S Funny Peculiar at Liverpool Everyman is a comedy worthy of the name. None of your flaccid domestic numbers, here is two and a half hours of gutsy, funny sex open-hearted and unrestrained. A new, original play, destined for popularity. It all starts in a Pennine village where shopkeeper Tre vor, his sights set on fellatio, sympathises with the local ...

... Judy joins Young Vic JUDY GEESON joins the Young Vic company for the first time to play Julia in Two Gentlemen of Verona, which opens on Fe bruary 19. Pip Miller returns to the company to play Proteus. Others in the cast are Michael Walker, Joanna McCallum, Michael Graham Cox. Alfred Lynch, Derek Fowlds, Darien Angadi, Hugh Hastings. Michael Menaugh. Peter O'Farrell, John Vine and Judy ...

... LANCASTER 'LILE JIMMY WILLIAMSON' THE fascinating story of little Jimmy Williamson, the former Lancaster linoleum tycoon, is unfolded with fine dramatic quality at the Dukes Playhouse Lancaster, in Lile Jimmy Williamson. By David Pownall, Lancaster's own playwright it enhances his reputation in such work. The play is carried out on two stage level, to depict the two time levels ...

... BRIGHTON 'THE ARTHUR HORNER SHOW' PHIL WOODS was commissioned by Foco Novo to write The Arthur Horner Show. which opened at Brighton's Gardner Centre for the Arts on February 4. Based on the emergence of the Miners' Federation later the N.U.M., as a body of political force, this rather-than-a-play shows how the miners' organisations have been in the forefront of the workers' struggles for ...

... Personality of the week IN THE memorable Peter Hall production of John Gabriel Borkman for the National Theatre Company at the Old Vic there are a number of fine performances, including those of Ralph Richardson, Wendy Hiller and Peggy Ashcroft, as Borkman, Ella and Gunhild, but there is a young newcomer to the company who is also outstanding: FRANK GRIMES who plays Erhart. It is a tribute ...

... GUILDFORD 'HAY FEVER' FIRST performed just fifty years ago. Hay Fever has been revived for the latest time at the Guildford Yvonne Arnaud. Noel Coward said it was tapped out in three days, but although still bearing some superficial appeal, it is now no more than a trivial light comedy pastiche. This production has the asset of a turquoise 'twenties set by Pamela Ingram complete with ...

... MANCHESTER 'STAMPING GROUND' A NEW ballet by Jonathan Thorpe, Stamping Ground, was given its premiere by the Northern Dance Theatre in the opera theatre of the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, on March 18. Mr. Thorpe, who is one of the Company's two ballet masters, has set his new work to the music of J. S. Bach's Suite No. 5 in C Minor for solo cello. This is a rather sombre and ...

... COVENT GARDEN 'DANCES AT A GATHERING' SNOW lay on the ground outside Covent Garden on March 19, but inside all was Spring with the Royal Ballet revival of Jerome Robbins' Dances at a Gathering. This relaxed work, set to just over an hour of unadulterated Chopin, has a freshness which never seems to stale with repetition. The choreography is essen tially classical but by no means intense, ...

... EVIL AND ODD Entertaining Mr Sloane takes things generally considered evil, odd and dangerous and uses them as means of revealing in a perfectly ordinary way the motivations and desires of Kath, Sloane and Ed, and, to a lesser degree, Kemp, Kath's brother, halt blind, who knows of Sloane's killing before the youth came to Kath as a lodger. Kath's passion for Sloane, which he wickedly ...

... 'A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC' AT THE ADELPHI PETER HEPPLE REVIEWS Opened April 15 WITH everything he has done in the theatre, starting with West Side Story, Stephen Sondheim has advanced the art and the craft of the musical. In A Little Night Music he has brought it to a height. What we see at the Adelphi is not an opera, though it certainly owes something to the operatic form, with its intri ...