... Sunshine matinee STARS mingled with prodigies at Drury Lane on Sunday, November 18 for the annual Sunshine Gala Matinee in the presence of Princess Margaret. Major talents of today, who. had all given their services free, shared the bill with top competitors from the All England Sunshine Dancing Competition, from various schools throughout the country. Each half of the show began with a ...

... Dickens musical VICTOR SPINETTI gathers together with skill and enthusiasm the loosely organised musical adaptation of Charles Dickens's Hard Times, given its premiere at the Belgrade, Coventry. Mr. Spinetti plays Samuel Sleary the ringmaster of a small family tenting circus. He tells the story of the novel with theatrical panache, the incidents being illustrated by the ladies and ...

... Mysterious play and fine acting at Hampstead by R.B. Marriott IT IS HAPPENING here and now; the players are playing themselves; illusion has been stripped away; the audience is not watching the play, it belongs to it. So it is with Peter Handke's The Ride Across Lake Constance, translated by Michael Roloft, at Hampstead Theatre Club. Or, rather, this is how it seems, because, of course, ...

... Many qualities but no heart CALM SEAS and a prosperous voyage it may have been above decks, but below on a convict ship bound for Australia in the year 1807, if we are to believe Steve Gooch's Female Transport. calmness appeared solely in the guise of satiated slppn or f self-inflicted death, and prosperity was never even a dream. The play, directed very well by Ron Daniels, opened at the ...

... Lite Is A Dream BY THE MIDDLE of the 17th century, Spain had nearly completed her own isolation from the mainstream of Europe, both Catholic and Protestant, in matters social, political and artistic. Calderon de la Barca's play La Vida es suefio poitomises this ostrichism even in the new Roy Campbell translation which Another Theatre Company staged at the Mercury. Life Is a Dream comes ...

... Royal Court TWO APPOINTMENTS made by the Royal Court are of Ann Jellicoe, who becomes Literary Manager, and Michael Abben- setts, who has been named as Resident Dramatist. ...

... 'Molloy' a JOHN MOLLOY'S one-man show, Molloy, at Dublin Eblana, is a compendium of events in his life, both personal and theatrical. The personal includes a stint in the Navy, invalided back to Dublin, periods in tubercular hospitals. The theatrical takes in touring with the fit-ups, Shakespeare and films. Mr Molloy's artistry is in mellowing the sacred and profane of each, in articulating ...

... On the rocks IT'S A BIT of under the greenwood tree, who loves to lie with me at the Bush, where the double-bill from November 5 to 17 began with Christina Brown's Under the Bamboo Tree. This is a half-hour three-hander about a marriage which may, or may not. be on the rocks. The incumbent wife has invited the incipient one to dinner they take their roles very seriously, but all the man ...

... DANCE 'Romeo and Juliet' GREAT ARTISTS such as Fonteyn and Nureyev never seem to exhaust the imagination they bring to even the most familiar of their roles, and in Romeo and Juliet at Covent Garden on December 15 their dancing had a spontaneity which made the choreography seem freshly created. Juliet is still within Fonteyn's powers as a dancer and no-one else brings that magical blend ...

... Dolores Gray as Rose DOLORES GRAY, returning to the West End theatre for the first time since her success in Annie Get Your Gun. had a very warm reception when she opened at the Piccadilly as Rose, the ogress but pitiable mother in Gypsy, having taken the part from the great Angela Lansbury. It was a pity that enthusiasm could not con tinue to the end of the show, except in the sense of ...

... Manchester lunchtime MANCHESTER'S first lunch-time pub drama production has taken place in the wine bar of the Nag's Head, Jackson's Row. It was put on by the Manchester Drama Group, which has linked together a number of players in the city, and hopes, probably under a revised title, to stage regular productions, both at mid-day and in the early evening, in this and other pubs. The group have ...

... SWARTHMORE, LEEDS DAVID ROBERTSON is battling on at the Swarthmore Centre Studio in Woodhouse Square, Leeds, and has put on a very lively and delightful Christmas pantomime, Ali Baba and The Forty Thieves, It is a real traditional pantomime with a camel, a dame a clown (who really was a clown in his youth, touring with Bertram Mills) and a principal boy. The cast are mainly students at the ...