... Harry Nelson and Ann Todd are two of the distinguished personalities in the bright lights of the West End. He is to be seen heading the cast of A'o Time for Sergeants at Her majesty's, while she shortly moves into the Saville by DIC K ICICII VItDN THE name of Barry Nelson rang few bells with us when it was announced that he-- the only American in the cast-- was to star in a Transatlantic ...

... The King and I Carlton The best screen musical so far. With Deborah Kerr (she sings her simpler songs, the rest are dubbed) exactly the way we like her, demure and authoritative as the Victorian English governess, and a breath taking performance by Yul Brynner as the King. It 's hard to take one's eyes off this astonishing artist. Not to be missed on any account. Oklahoma Odeon, Leicester ...

... St. James's Lesley Storm's play, based on the predica ment of Mrs. Donald Maclean, falls between melodrama and discussion, and takes three acts to reach the bottom. It is one of those plays in which cigarettes, drinks, playing the piano, opening and shutting of hand- bags all those old producer's stand-bys-- f arc used to disguise the fact that there is never any real need for anyone to move. ...

... Royal Festival Ilall The 1956 London season runs until September 8. The two new offerings arc Charnlcy's Homage to a Princess and Les Deux Errants, the first work of a new choreographer, Wolfgang Brunner. The first is chi-chi and rather motiveless revue stuff. The second is a gimmick ballet (some of the dancers arc intended to merge into the scenery), but there seems to be no reason at any ...

... Studio One Affecting litde story, made by Roberto Gavaldon in Mexico for Walt Disney, about a small Mexican boy who runs away with a beloved army horse, because it is to be shot for failing as a show-jumper. Fine horse; clever boy all the customs of the country. ...

... Rome, Sweet Rome By Archi bald Lyall. (Putnam; 12s. 6d.) A cliarm- ing and most helpful guide. Thoroughly recommended for anyone intending a Roman holiday or remembering one. The Funny Bone By J. Mailaren- Ross. (Elek; 15s.) Recommended. For the parodies by a master parodist. For the memoir of Alun Lewis. For some funny and some touching pieces. For interest that anyone can write at times so ...

... Ten North Frederick i i By John O'Hara. (Cresset Press 16s.) Here 's the mud. That might mean simply that John O'Hara has been good and realistic in describing his pillar of American small-town society, a lawyer who after he has died duly mourned is presented from every angle and many a pair of eyes for us to see what sort of a character he really was. But I am conveying also one reader's ...

... The Proving Flight By David Beatty (Seeker and Warburg; 14s.) Taking us across the Adantic in a new aircraft making her trial crossing, this novel tempts me to use the word documentary to describe the kind of interest it so compellingly possesses; but that implies routine, and there is nothing routine about Emperor Able Dog's battle, east to west and back, with the weather, with defects of ...

... Saville So many Christmas swans are geese that we applaud John Clements' courage in bringing Ibsen to the Saville at holiday- time. It is not an outing for the high brow it is for all who love the theatre genuinely. There is no need to get snarled up in grudging discussion of Emlyn Williams' Hjalmar (vain and hollow) or Dorothy Tutin's girl called Hedwig (the fourteen-year-old doomed by an ...

... Empire the tender trap, of course, is what you think it is and Frank Sinatra, a hitherto successful philanderer, is the victim of it. The tender trapper is Debbie Reynolds, acting cute as a wide-eyed, stage-struck girl with a long-term marriage plan. Celeste Holm and David Wayne, as the second couple, manage to make rings round the principals, but that may be because Mr. Sinatra is handicapped ...

... Carlton Michael Rennie, as a priest (priests are all the vogue this year), brings Christianity to the Indians during the Spanish in vasion of California in 1796, what time a Spanish officer (Richard Egan) and an Indian chieftain's granddaughter (Rita Moreno) make whoopee on the beach. ...

... Villa Borehese Continentalc A Franco-Italian omnibus work con taining a number of disconnected sketches of the encounters that might be observed in a public garden a sort of Italian Hyde Park during the course of a single day. Many of the episodes are charming, and most of the acting is superior, but some how it doesn't jell into a picture. ...