... Austrian bill AN AUSTRIAN Federal Theatre Parliamentary bill has reached the final stages of drafting. Austria's Minister of Education and the Arts, Dr. Fred Sinowatz, states that the presept Bundestheatrerverband (Federal Theatres Association), claimed to be the largest thea trical trust in the world, is to undergo a thorough reor ganisation. It is planned to do away with the bureaucratic ...

... THOMAS HUXLEY THOMAS HUXLEY College in Ac ton has a flourishing department of English and Drama, though it is designed to turn out teachers who speailise in the theatre, rather than actors as such. One of the lecturers, Peter Chilver, has dramatised Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir, and this was performed by a cast of both students and staff in the new lecture theatre between December 13 and 15 ...

... HOWFF THE PHANTOM CAPTAIN is back at the Howff as a late-night show with a Wild West programme called Howdy, Stranger! This is another in-joke, and not a very good one at that. The overall situ-ation is a cowboy convention held in Lon don's suburbia and attended by delegates who have never come within miles of a horse, let alone a steer. So far, very good, but it is spoiled by going on for ...

... BUSH UP AT the Bush Theatre, something else stirs. This is a new revue called Phase 3 and a Bit, put together by four young men, who, on December 16, took an irreverent look at the economies of this country, and our attitudes thereto, and found the whole lot wanting. Fortunately, the audience was better served. This is an intelligent cabaret, even if there is too much of the same length among ...

... lonescoon the screen THE THEATRE of the absurd is largely the theatre of Eugene lonesco. At the French Institute his influence was shown through another sphere, that of the film. La Vase was made originally for west German television; it was shot in colour in remote France and the principal actor as well as the' scriptwriter is M. lonesco. On his own admission in conversation af terwards. ...

... Well worth a rewrite IN The Red Red Robin, Glenn Chandler has written a play which, if it only had the courage of its own convictions, might very well have a longer life than that promised by its production at the Golden Lane by the amateur Limelight Players. Red Red Robin is about Christmas not the one on the greetings cards, nor even the one in medieval altar-pieces, but the one created ...

... Actors' Company are notable at the Shaw by Miles Litvinoff THE LIGHTS dimmed. Guardian readers to a man, we sat hushed in expectancy. Five silent actors confronted us, seated in a row on white pinewood seats. They began to emit strange sounds, reading from scripts. Good Heavens, I began to mutter, feverishly shuffling my programme, They don't know their lines! Can this be the final ...

... Be Prepared! RUDE JOKES about Girl Guides and being prepared probably date from the days of Baden-Powell himself. The Scout movement is, like the Church or the Monday Club, an obvious choice for satire. In Union Jack (and Bonzo), which reaches Hampstead Theatre Club by way of Edin burgh, Stanley Eveling makes the more obvious jokes with skill, and says few things besides. Despite the ...

... Cathedral multi-media REVELATIONS, the most mysterious book in the New Testament, has cried out for dramatic or film treatment and Adrian V. Benjamin's version, entitled Apocalypse, would seem to form a good basis from which to work. Described as a multi-media experience it is basically just that, part dramatised documentary, part oratorio, part ballet, part drama and all decked out with ...

... 'Hamlet' at the Howff I DONT know whether to stand up to cheer, or to lie down and boo--The Howff's ten-week season under the auspices of M.S. Productions bowed itself out with Hamlet, directed by Joseph O'Conor and John Link. They shouldn't have done it. For the in tention applause; for the execu tion silence, or rather, a query. Why this play, in this way, here? We have become ...

... Festival Ballet ANY ATTEMPT to display the finished work of budding choreographers does a valuable service to the art of dance, for good ones are even rarer than good playwrights. London Festival Ballet are aware of this and staged another of their periodic Choreographic Even ings of new work at the Collegiate on December 20, with seven varied works danced mainly by members of the company. ...

... 'The Feast of Fools' THE FEAST OF FOOLS at the Round House is rather different from the usual Christmas holiday fare. But despite large helpings of cruelty and bawdy, it's as homely as mince pies or pantomime. Master Paddy Fletcher de la Zouche whisks us away with a joke on his lips and a leer in his eye to the cosy womb of medieval England. In the Baronial Hall of Poindexter Armbuster you ...