... CJf ttjL The Globe Revue (Globe) GOOD revues have a way of popping up unexpectedly. The talents of a perhaps unknown company combine suddenly with mysterious felicity, and the trick is done. It happened again at the Lyric, Hammersmith, last summer. The unknown company was brought to the Globe and there became very well known indeed, sending patrons away happily persuaded that they had seen ...

... l&JL- The Square ISiui (Lrrie. Hammersmith) Anthony C'ookman IN a crossword puzzle the appropriate clue for this piece would be No sort of play for Simon Tappertit (3, 6, 4). Mr. Tappertit did not like human gore, and The Square Ring fairly spouts the stuff. But if you have no objection to oodles of red paint and the painful gaspings of men who have been battered almost out of recognition ...

... I Kr Murder Mistaken (Vaudeville) OF all the forms of disaster than can befall a new production, one of the most disconcerting and embarrassing is that in which a minor player scores a success which, in the opinion of the audience, overwhelmingly outweighs anything else achieved in the play. One of the most awkward moments the London theatre has experienced for many years came at the end of ...

... Nightmare On Tlie Island By E. V. Knox THE output of Utopias, good or bad, in contemporary fiction is remark ably large, and not a few of them are insular. i ne island in Robert Ardrey's new book, The Brotherhood of Fear (Collins, 12s. 6d.), is not one of the Blessed Isles, because the mainland which controls it must be somewhere behind the Iron Curtain, although we are not supposed to guess ...

... Gtl^^ttucnz 1 The Other Heart (Old Vie) Anthony Cookinan FRANCOIS VILLON, fine poet and low criminal, is the hero of the first new play that the Old Vic has presented since Mr. Priestley's An Inspector Calls, seven years ago. Mr. James Forsyth rises to the honour with one of those eloquently rambling episodic dramas which get good and bad notices because they please some people as much as ...

... ctt feTWr Anthony Cookman Third Person (Criterion) THIS is a curious play. Its main situation is simple. An American woman becomes aware that her husband, though it is more than a year since he returned from active service, has still not adjusted himself to domestic life. This is only odd because the husband seems to have nothing on his mind. He is happy-go-lucky, well-to-do, enjoys a drink ...

... Dial M For Murder (Westminster) Antlionr Cookman THE first television drama to make the London stage is of a quality to whip up the sale of sets among theatre-goers. It is the most arresting thriller to appear since Ten Minute Alibi, and that little classic of contri vance is now nearly twenty years old. Mr. Frederick Knott demonstrates afresh how exciting it may be to enter thoroughly ...

... A Hempen Coll In the Suburbs E. F. Knox JUST as I had become thoroughly interested in the early life of Charlie Pilcrow, who lived in the London suburb of Middle ditch, where his father was a pharmaceutical chemist (for the boy's thoughts and feelings were very sympathetically treated), what must Mr. Gerald Bullett do in The Trouble at Number Seven (Michael Joseph; 12s. 6d.), but break off ...

... (tt- At(er My Fashion (Ambassadors) Anthony lookman MISS DIANA MORGAN'S new play is exciting. It would be more exciting still if she had had the courage of her main theme and refrained from bedecking and bedevilling it with obvious contrivances; but the contrivances have at least a superficial stage effectiveness and most people will be grateful for what they get. She has a problem of ...

... : Reviewed by Trevor cl Allen THE more I read memoirs the more am I astonished at the remarkable women who emerged from staid Victorian domesticity. In 1862 Mrs. Anna Leonowens, at twenty-seven, was invited by King Mongkut of Siam to become governess to his children. She filled the post for five and a half years, pub lished An English Governess At The Court Of Siam in 1870, and in 1873 a ...

... (Royal Court Theatre Club THIS is one of the most famous theatres in the history of the stage since 1900. It was here that Granville Barker and Vedrenne sponsored the Thousand Performances, the season that brought Shaw to the zenith; here, in the 'twenties, Barry Jackson staged Back to Methuselah. The Court, later a cinema and damaged in the war, is reclaimed now for the stage. When it opened, ...

... . By Phyllis Bentley. Gollancz 12s. 6 d.) Seven short stories of Yorkshire life in different periods, arranged with the effect of continuity. ...