... SELDOM-SEEN OPERAS AT CAMDEN AS IN previous years, a feature of the Camden Festival 1974 will be productions of seldom- seen operas. On February 20 at the Collegiate, Opera da Camera will present the first perfor mance in this country of The Comedy of Errors by Stephen Storace, in an English transla tion by Arthur Jacobs with music edited by Richard Piatt. In the cast are Marie Hayward, ...

... 'Nutcracker' lack of style FURTHER VISITS to London Festival Ballet's production of The Nutcracker at the Royal Festival Hall prompt me to ask why this commercially successful presentation should at the same time be so unsatisfactory from an artistic point. In the main the dancers are hard-working and proficient, seemingly interested in their work in spite of two- and-a-half weeks of ...

... A living Giselle OF THE MAJOR classical ballets in the normal repertoire, 'Giselle makes the most demands on the interpretative skills of the leading dancer, requiring her to dance the first act in a manner suggesting shyness, trust, simple joy and finally mental oreaKaown, while the second act demands an other-worldliness, but showing the last vestige of human feeling before it is sapped ...

... Nureyev version THE ROYAL BALLET danced farewell to Christmas on January 21 with the last performance this season of .Nureyev's version of The Nutcracker, a particularly successful production that deserves further revival at the end of the year. Merle Park's childlike glee as Clara, her mechanical exacti tude as the puppet doll and sheer beauty of movement and grandeur as the dream ...

... 'Hasty Heart' revival THE SCOTS have a reputation for being dour and independent, but added to these, would it be possible to have a man who was also cold, rather insensitive to the feelings of others and very stubborn? This is the part that Richard Todd plays in The Hasty Heart by John Patrick, who wrote it in 1944. and the fact that Mr Patrick is a US citizen could have something to do ...

... SPECTRES OF MIDDLE-AGE IN 'CHEZ NOUS' by R.B. Marriott IN CHEZ NOUS, Peter Nichols' new play, at the Globe, Dick and Diana, on the strength of money brought in by Dick's best-selling book on child care and treatment, have bought an old house and its big bam in the Dordogne region of France. They are joined by old friends, Phil and Liz. All are in early middle-age, apparently happy and ...

... 'Rib' that irritates WHEN A NEW theatre company is founded with the avowed aim of staging the works of one particular dramatist, it is natural to expect great things of playwright, director and cast. Alas, the first presentation of the New Company at the Act Inn on February 5 Rib by Tim Rose Price amounts to an evening of im mense irritation. The irritation is largely because it all ...

... Hyde Park THE QUALITY of performance put together by the new Joint Stock Theatre Group in The Speakers, now in the middle of a short tour is high enough to make one anxious to see them work with material of more dramatic substance. Based on a book by Heath cote Williams which mixes documentary with fiction in an account of public utterances and private lives in the shadowy world of Hyde ...

... Israeli history EDINBURGH Pool Lunch Hour, Theatre are celebrating their third birthday with a brisk production of The Moshe Dayan Extravaganza by Michael Almaz, associate director of the Pool. The cast of three, Irene Sunters, Tutte Lemkow and the Pool's own director, Phil Emanuel, take the audience on a guided tour of Israeli history from the time of Abraham to the present day. To compress ...

... Hugh Lloyd, playing Buttons for the first time in his life, broke all pantomime records at Lewisham Concert Hall with Cinderella. When it ended its run on Saturday, February 2, the show had been seen by 51,000 people. Hugh is fitting in a brief visit to his mother in Chester before going to Newquay to start H pre-production work on the summer Ushow which he will be presenting in ...

... Interesting, entertaining, but DAVID MERCER'S new play, Duck Song. presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych, is on the surface interesting and entertaining, but, as it deals with momentous matters, one must probe below the surface; only to find very little there. Our world may have a good appearance in many ways, despite obvious upheavals, and human beings are perhaps not ...

... 'Double Double' JAMES SAUNDERS' one-act play Double Double, which has joined Adrian Mitchell's Mind Your Head at the Shaw, is set in a garage canteen, where bus transport employees gather for food and talk. This is a very funny work, with keenly observed and beautifully drawn characters, and dialogue which, as it reveals present feeling and thought, vividly mirrors the life of the ...