... 'Woyzeck' in two parts WOYZECK, the real life story of a beautiful little murder, is Thea- tremakers' first offering under Finlay Welsh's direction at Stirling's MacRobert Centre, and a welcome return to the company's better form. Georg Buchner's unfinished text of 1836 deals with an inarticulate and deranged Polish soldier, who murders his faithless mistress. The crime, seen from outside ...

... Cambridge Company IT IS 200 years since Oliver Goldsmith met unexpected success at Covent Garden with She Stoops to Conquer. Still the romance pleases and the comedy would have to be poorly played if it failed to produce plenty of genuine hearty laughter, lhe produc tion by the Cambridge Theatre Company at the Ashcroft, Croydon, fulfilled happy an ticipations and spread pleasure through ...

... Waltz of the Toreadors' is a reminder of a lost art By Lisa Gordon Smith IT IS HARD to realise that it is eighteen years this month since Anouilh's The Waltz of the Toreadors was first seen in London but the revival at the Hay market on February 14 proves it to have lost none of its impact and freshness and serves by contrast to demons trate that valid dramatic writ ing has become ...

... Melville comedy ALAN MELVILLE may have another hit to his credit, if audience reaction to the Northampton Repertory premiere of his comedy Oops is any criterion. Melville himself is appearing as guest artist in this production. Witty dialogue, abounding in topical allusions, is the hall mark of the new comedy, based on the French farce Tchao by Marc-Gilbert Sauvajon. Some of the scenes, ...

... OUTRAGEOUS absurdity, the ridiculous become the normal, is as difficult to present on the stage as high comedy, and like high comedy, must succeed entirely if it is to satisfy at all. Ronald Eyre has gone in for outrageous absurdity in Something's Burning, at the Mermaid. The setting is a country police station in a country which is beset by spies and counter spies, police as spies and ...

... DURING The Game's A Bogey, given its premiere at Aberdeen Arts Centre on February 9, one of the lines from Scottish revolutionary John MacLean stresses the necessity of squaring the emotions with the intellect. And it is a pity that author John McGrath had not done just that in this, his latest work, sub titled The John MacLean Show. This is the second production by his group, the 7:84 ...

... Caravan season INTERNATIONAL Ballet Caravan, Alexander Roy's Lon don Ballet Theatre, returns to London for a short season at the Commonwealth Institute from April 25 to 27. Four new ballets will be presented, Quintet, a first ballet by Prue Sheridan to music by Jean Francaix, Visages d'une Femme, by Alexander Roy to an electronic score by Jacob Druckan and featuring Chris tina Gallea, ...

... BALLET PROMS PROM enthusiasm occasionally seems to have little to do with the quality of the music being played, but the large number of floor-squatters in the seatless stalls area at Covent Garden at last week's two Ballet Proms certainly had something worthy of their cheers. On April 2 they had a powerful reading by Colin Davis of the Rite of Spring score, dominating the action on stage ...

... Delights of 'Mignon' IT IS perhaps understandable why Thomas's opera Mignon no longer holds a place on our stage, with its plot about a girl stolen by gipsies and eventually reunited with her father after a series of far-fetched coincidences. But it does contain much attractive music, quite apart from the familiar numbers like Je suis Titania and Connais-tu le Pays?, and the Court ...

... Irish premieres THE IRISH Ballet Company's second programme will be premiered at the Abbey, Dublin on May 28, when the works to be presented are Timeless Echoes, by Domy Reiter- Soffer, Peter Darrell's Bieder- meier dances and Grand Pas Gitane; Loveraker, also by Domy Reiter-Soffer, to music by Isang Yun; and West Cork Ballad, by Joan Denise Moriarty. All except the last are first ...

... Rameau THE MONTEVERDI Choir Society on March 29 presented a concert performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall of Rameau's Les FStes d'H£b£, in which there are three stories, one for each act, as we would say, or entrie as Rameau's librettist described the division. The music is lively and each number is less predictable in shape than the formality of da capo aria we have grown accustomed to in ...

... COLISEUM-ROYAL DANISH BALLET THE ROYAL Danish Ballet is one of the few really great dance companies, with a perfection of style and technique running through the entire ensemble from the corps de ballet to the principals. Their visit last week to the Coliseum was only their third to London and six days is too short a time for a company of such quality, par ticularly as they played ...