... REVIEWS by C. A. LEJEUNE THE charm of The Glass Menagerie is as brittle as its title: try to grasp it too firmly, and it shatters in your hand. The play from which it was made was not universally popular when it came to London last season, although I have known people who went three or four times to see it; nor would I dare to say with any certainty, This is your picture. I myself fought ...

... HIGHLY DANGEROUS, which marks Margaret Lock- wood's return to films, is a modern spy-thriller especially written for her by Eric Ambler. The story is set in a Police State behind the Iron Curtain, where, it is believed, germ warfare is being prepared. To dis cover the truth of this, Frances Conway, a young entomo logist working in the British Biological Control Labora tories, is asked to ...

... (Mr tfc- Anthony Cooknian Twelfth Aisjht (Old Vic) THE Old Vic, home after an absence of nearly ten changeful years, may well feel embarrassment as it takes stock of the various responsibilities it must now shoulder. There is, in the first place, what is called the People's Theatre tradition. Though broken as long ago as 1933 and never wholly restored, it cannot be altogether left out of ...

... Odyssey s, Various #s. V. A h .v ON the second day of the new Parliament after the election of 1935 A. P. H. addressed the House of Commons as the Junior Burgess of the University of Oxford on behalf of Private Members' Bills; and supported by Mr. Mabane and the Inde pendent Labour Party (and nobody else) secured a minority vote of five to 232. He was complimented on his composure and aplomb ...

... I by Cyril Butcher WHY all this fuss about repeated programmes? The fact that Richard II. was performed three times seem to have brought to a head yet another television controversy There have been dirty cracks by various columnists, and nume ous viewers have felt strongly enough about the matter to take up arms and write to their pet newspapers. While it is most g ati fying that television ...

... THE SCARLET SWORD. by Rupert Croft- Cooke By H. E. Bate is. (Michael Joseph 10s. 6 d.) (Michael Joseph 9s; 6 d.) A BREATH OF AIR. By Rumer Godden. SHADOW ON THE BRIDGE. 9 By Betsey Barton. (Gollancz 10s. 6d.) THE BACKWARD BRIDE. By Aubrey Menen. (Chatto and Windus 8s. 6d.) IT might almost be supposed that someone had dared Mr. Bates to write a novel about a Catholic convent being besieged ...

... A REFUGE IN KASHMIR IN 1947 Mr. H. E. Bates'1 new novel, The Scarlet Sword; Br. A. J. Cronins The Spanish Gardener -By VERNON FANE A NEW novel by Mr. H. E. Bates is an event to be taken seriously, for Mr. Bates is a serious writer, a craftsman who knows that his profession is not an easy one but consists of a series of sustained and often rewarding efforts. There was an American who said that ...

... DEAR MISS PHCEBE Phoenix IT is Miss Phoebe Throssel from Quality Street. The play a gift from the Regency is Barrie- with-music. Everything is here as of old but there is also a musical score by Harry Parr Davies, and the Blue and White Room rings with unaccustomed song. Person ally, I prefer Barrie unsupported it can be held that to add music to Quality Street is to pile honey upon sugar. ...

... Ambassadors I WISH dramatists would cease to write plays for two people. It is rash economy unless the author is uncommonly inventive. Without this invention and the firmest touch on character, a piece is bound to drag and lag. Jan de Hartog here provides another of these needless bits of technical juggling, and I am afraid that Dulcie Gray and Michael Denison alert players though they are ...

... -K Palladium THIS is hardly an apt title, for everyone in a smack-it-across revue is determinedly in this world, and anchored to it. Nothing ethereal here: it is. all as matter- of-fact as a packet of highly- coloured boiled sweets. Binnie Hale could not be other than welcome, especially when she revives her Nanette songs for us Nat Jackley is a comedian who stretches himself like a ribbon ...

... IF only The Magnet were a rather better film, what a good film it would be It has all the makings of a successor to the delightful Hue and Cry. It is a neat story about children, by Ealing's T. E. B. Clarke, who understands children, particularly small boys, so well a real-life setting (of Merseyside) splendidly photographed a production team with taste and humour and a good cast. But somehow ...

... REVIEWS by C. A. LEJEUNE THERE has been a good deal of heart-burning in certain bosoms about the choice of The Mudlark as the pUce de resistance at the recent Royal Performance. The film, of course, is technically British, complying with all the rules laid down by the Board of Trade for this qualification, but although it was made in England, it was made by an American Company with an American ...