... AFTER Oklahoma! Drury Lane began to live inadventurously and prosperously on American musicals, one sure-fire hit following another. Carousel, South Pacific, The King And I--we aged but they did not. They ran and ran. But with Plain And Fancy an element of risk crept into the business. Rogers and Hammerstein did not write it, nor have they backed the latest import, in some ways an even more ...

... LONDON'S parks and squares are far-famed, and deservedly; their green charm is apparent to every visitor. But the city has another, more secret landscape-- her mysterious network of back-gardens. William Sansom's new novel The Loving Eye (Hogarth Press, 13s. 6d.) is set in just such a panorama. His thirty-nine year old hero, Matthew Ligne, spends much time gazing out. This is what he sees: ...

... i Palace This is the Renaud-Barrault company, and J that ought to be review enough. The first- j night audience cheered the artificial flourishes I of an old Lope de Vega comedy, Le Chien du j Jardinier (a version by Georges Nevcux). Superb j acting made artifice sound like art. Four more 1 plays are in a month's season; there are only two further performances of Moliere's The j Misanthrope. ...

... Hippodrome Some disarming clowning. And, if y°u i cannot go to Rome, here at least is the Fountain of Trevi more or less. J ...

... Mob Dick Warner Theatre and Studio One Join Huston's brave and exciting attempt to bring Herman Melville's classic to the j screen, with Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab, J the fanatical mariner with a whalebone leg, who is dedicated to the pursuit and destruction j of the great white whale. The film misses j the full scope of Melville's mysticism, but conies out as a tremendous sea adventure. ...

... j Plaza j Joan Crawford goes through hell as a business woman who learns that her boy-husband (Cliff Robertson) is a thief, liar, near-bigamist j and violent schizophrenic, revet ting to infantil- j 'sm and beginning to regard her as his mother. 1 isn't too easy for the audience either. ...

... Empire translation of East Side juvenile delin- l quent into world's champion middleweight, I v gl'ace *->°d and Pier Angeli. Paul Newman as Rocky Graziano. L ...

... La Cieale (The Grasshopper) Everyman, Hampstead Beautifully played and thoughtfully directed j film from Russia, based on Tchekov story, about a good and quietly great doctor who wears himself to death paying for the bohemian 1 extravagances of his sweet little, silly little wife. A curiously sensitive piece of Victoriana. ...

... Academy Produced by Marcel Pagnol in 1937, this superb film of French peasant life has been banned in England until now. Presumable reason: no priest has blessed the union of the man and woman whose devotion for each other and the rich soil of Provence brings a dying village back to life. Tender and timeless; fine cast headed by Orane Demazis, Gabriel Gabrio, Fernandel. REVIEWS ...

... Gaumont British thriller, second-class, set in Paris and Marseilles, about a young man planted as undercover agent by what might be Interpol, to smash a syndicate of counter feiters. With Michael Craig, Julia Arnall and a lot of familiar faces. ...

... The Bright Prison, by Penelope Mortimer (Michael Joseph, 12s 6d). This is one of those tidy books, the kind bounded by the walls of a Grand Hotel or (as here' by a time-limit. Penelope Mortimer takes a week-end that starts ordinarily with a children's birthday party in a London family's house, and gradually upheaves the dull routine of the parents' life. Mark has lived un- questioningly in a ...

... The Engagement, by Edith de Born (Chapman and Hall, 13s 6d). A bachelor Civil Servant in his forties, a man set in a negative and emotionally empty life, visits Italy and meets a Frenchwoman of like age and a similar career. They fall decisively in love, but the obstacles are formidable two mothers, one financially dependent and the other emotionally so, and the obvious difficulties inherent ...