... Fredd Wayne's Success At the Berkeley Restaurant. W.l, Fredd Wayne (from South Pacific scores a marked success with original patter, catchy songs, and crisp lyrics. At the start, after mentioning very many introductions and their outcome-- Flanagan meet ing Allen, Ava Gardner meeting Frank Sinatra, and so on he presents himself to patrons. Sly digs at British types are worked in, a brief but ...

... . By C. E. Vulllamy. Michael Joseph 10s. 6 d.) A lively thriller peppered with satire. It j is based on a nightmarish piece of fantasy but brings if into focus and keeps it there. ...

... . By Pamela Barrington. (barker 9s. bd.) Miss Barrington sticks to precedents that are wearing a little thin. Murder, jewels, polioe, cockney dialect, and so on. By binding or printing error there were sixteen blank pages in my copy, but it did not very much matter. ...

... . By Stanley Jackson. (Odhams 15s.) Mr. Jackson is an adept in that most difficult undertaking, the biography of living people. He follows his excellent i study of Mr. Justice Humphreys with this s study of a vital and in many ways para- j doxical personality. He writes racily, with an easy mastery of facts and a liking for a good story. ...

... Macbeth (Mermaid) I should not have been at all surprised if someone had appeared in Inverness during the Murder scene and observed I zeem you 'm gwain purty fast. This Mermaid revival, which whisks along at Elizabethan speed (credit to Joan Swinstead) is spoken in an accent similar (we are told) to that commonly em ployed by educated Londoners at the beginning of the seventeenth century. ...

... Casque d'Or (Golden Mane) {Academy) I am told by a man who should know, ince his business is to show and distribute foreign films in England, that what modern audi.-nces hope for in French pictures is plenty of sex and violence. Their hopes_will not be dis: ppo-nted by Casque d'Or Golden Marie based on the career of a real-life charmer, -/ho was supposed to bring bad luck to all her lovers. ...

... The Brave Don't Cry with C. A LEJEUNE {Now generally released) A small British company known as Group 3 have just made a film of which we can be very proud. Its title is The Brave Don't Cry, and it is based on the true story of a Scottish mining disaster of a couple of years ago. With strong, realistic strokes, with documented detail, with out sentiment or sensationalism, but with deep ...

... AMERICAN INDIANS IN THE PACIFIC. By Thor Heyerdahl. (Allen and Unw in 70s.) J The sub-title of this work is The Theory Behind the Kon-Tiki Expedition, and one feels that the author regards his earlier book merely as a piece of entertainment compared with this vast collection of scientific evidence. THE FAR COUNTRY. By Neville Shute. Heinemann 12s. 6 d.) A sentimental story of England and Aus- ...

... (tt AiiMioiiy Ciinkman Hells Of Si. Marl ill's (Si. Martin's) SOME intimate revues may be said to succeed at a dashing gallop and some at a steady canter. Others-- and this is one such-- get there somehow. Starting naïvely, Bells Of St. Martin's tries first this, then that, losing more points than it scores; but it goes on trying and at last the points begin to add up into what may ...

... E. V. Knox TRAINING for active service in a very regimental regiment might seem rather an arid theme after all that has been done and written during the last twelve years, but Mr. Evelyn Waugh, as might be expected, makes it blossom with excitement and fun; with a gay disregard also, when he so chooses, of any distinction between serious comedy, satire and farce. Men at Arms (Chapman and Hall ...

... The Player King (Edinburgh Festival) DURING the year 1893 Lord Alfred Douglas, in one of the best of his poems, a ballad, wrote And 1 sailed to Ireland and to France, And I sailed to fair Scotlarul, And had much honour and pleasaunce And Katharine Gordon's hand. The speaker is Perkin Warbeck and Warbeck is the Player King of whom Christopher Hassall writes in a new chronicle play that has ...

... Affairs Of State (Cambridge) The affairs of state (and of love) are American. The author is French, Louis Verneuil and the company is English. It sounds an alarming medley but it is in fact a bland, pleasant evening in the theatre. Everything turns upon a marriage of convenience the plot is handled with gentle guile, and the dialogue has an easy 'glossiness. What really counts is the acting. ...