... Anthony Cookman ONE gets more and more nervous in the presence of dear old ladies. There is nothing, according to the modern play wright, of which they are not capable. Like Miss Mabel, they may proceed in an aura of parochial respectability from the forging of a will to the doing-in of the wicked sister, whose money the will distributes with a noble beneficence. Or, prinked out in old lace, ...

... Anthony Cookman SOMEONE at the Old Vic has had the slightly irresponsible idea of enlivening routine with a bout between heavyweight tragedians. So on alternate nights Mr. Richard Burton and Mr. John Neville leap from opposite corners of the ring, now as Othello, now as Iago. The audience are invited to cheer on their favourite. It turns out to be no better an idea than it sounds, though there ...

... BOORS From Spain to spam, by way of family dynasties, love, domestic frustrations, backstage theatre a mixed bag, with something for everyone I TREVOR ALLEN FOR a Birmingham-born parson's daughter Verily (nice name) Anderson has certainly seen life. The family's school bills, she says, were paid for by stud fees for the terriers she bred, and there was never a week when the village carrier ...

... ABSOLUTELY RIGHT At the Theatre Anthony Cookman THE RIVALS is a capital play with the one disadvantage of being far too well known to most of us. Amateurs have made it their own. Very likely we have acted in it our selves and cherish still the slightly ambiguous line in the school magazine recording that Jones Major played the part of Miss Lydia Languish as charmingly as could be expected. ...

... Anthony Cook man DOCTOR JOHNSON was much concerned lest The Beggar's Opera that he knew, with its labefaction of all principles,' might be injurious to public morality. It is beyond conjecture what he would have thought of the ballad-opera's perversion by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. 1 he whole point ot these angry men ol the late twenties was that morality, as the world practises it, is ...