... RICHARD GILL'S Travellers, presented by the Repertory Players on Sunday last, has for characters the circus and fairground folk with whom the author, now an actor, once worked. In consequence, the characters and dialogue have an air of authenticity which makes the unsua' and to some extent unfashionable theme dramatically exciting throughout the first act and even succeeds in holding the ...

... FOR as long as one cares to remember the work, of Gilbert and Sullivan has. apart from the D'Oyly Carte, been presented by amateur companies with hearty gusto and moderate finesse. There can be few who Have not joined in the fun on one side or the other of the foot lights, cherishing memories of harmonious music and worthy witticisms of an individual style which has no equal. One therefore ...

... MICHAEL CROFT's Youth Theatre production of Julius Caesar which began a short season it the Oueen's on August II. opens on a note of brilliant unconventionality with teenage Romans living in the streets to the strains of traditional jazz. And with thi^ Mr. Croft transforms v into a tale which b Tiding relevance to MoUcm-UiV ?.ire has often been i pon-- and more times tli. -vith gootl ...

... CRANKO'S COMIC BLOOD- AND-THUNDER BALLET by Eric Johns THE LONDON PREMIERE of John Cranko's music-hall burlesque of Sweeney Todd was given by the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden on Tuesday evening last. With tongue in cheek Mr. Cranko has re-told the tale of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, using a highly eloguent dance vocabulary. Most ingeniously he has chosen movements which are the ...

... THE Brighton and Hove Repertory Company were in top form for the opening Ust week of The Gaye Affair, a comedy by J. Barry Roach which concerns a novelist, Gaye by name and nature, particularly where the ladies arc concerned. His generous use of sex and medium has put him in the best-seller class and his publisher as clamouring for the completion of his next novel. He choses a luxury hotel ...

... 'The House of The Dead' LAST Friday evening saw the fifth and last production in the Prague Opera Season at the King's, Edinburgh, the British premifcre of Janacek's The House of the Dead. Written in 1928 to his own libretto adapted from Dostoevsky's Journal from the House of the Dead the work is a powerful evocation of the liv ing death of a prison camp in Siberia. Almost without plot, the ...

... YOU Won't Always Be On Top, first seen at the Royal. Stratford, some three years ago, arrived at Unity on August 12 wilh some songs by Barbara Chapman but with all the defects one noticed on the previous occasion. The chief fault is that Henry Chapman's work is not really a play at all. It is more akin to what the television people call a dramatised documentary, dealing as it does with what ...

... VALERY HOVENDENS current production of Macbeth at the Hovenden Theatre Club from Sunday to Friday of this week, prior to a special performance at the George Inn. Southwark, on Saturday afternoon, is virtually the same as that which gained acclaim during their Malta season last December. Inevitably there have had to be some cast changes, and this week sees Viera Shelley making her debut ...

... by John Montgomery CASTING has started for The Password is Courage, which Andrew and Virginia Stone will produce and direct on location for MGM and Boreham Wood. Production begins February 12 on this true story about the courage of a prisoner of war in Germany. The atones are casting tne picture mcni- selves. The report that Connie Francis will arrive in April for a Metro musical is ...

... 'Love's Labour's Lost' FOLLOWING the slovenly misrepresentation of Henry IV at the Assembly Hall last week, the Bristol Old Vic production of Love's Labour's Lost came to the Edinburgh Lyceum on August 25 as a heart-warming reminder of just how effective a Shakespearean comedy can be when staged with understanding and intelligence. The verbal wit and visual humour are kept bubbling along ...

... 'A Man and a Circus Ring' A PRIZE for originality is deserved by the Theatre Group of the Royal College of Art, London, for eschewing the church halls of Edinburgh and performing their contribution to the Festival Fringe, A Man and a Circus Ring, in a maruuee disguised as a circus tent. The show, which opened on August 18, is an entertaining and noisy frolic with a serious core, an aspect ...

... THOSE rare birds who have never had the pleasure of seeing Twelfth Night, and all those who have seen it seldom, will enjoy the current Old Vic production by Colin Graham, which is the same as last season but with a new young cast. They will find in Eileen Atkins, the Viola, a young woman of char acter who, with proper guidance and opportunity, should make the grade to an established ...