... A Girl Like Me ATV. May 26. AN actor in his late thirties recently expressed to me his awe and admiration for the newest generation of actors and actresses. They have a relaxed confidence I took years to achieve he said This maturity of performance was outstandingly noticeable in Francesca Annis and Ian Mc- Shane in A Girl Like Me. The agonies, the joys and the ridicu lousness of young ...

... Worthwhile show all round Not quite ready for peak viewing but a Between The Lines BBC-1, May 21. WHAT an excellent little revue this was! With the aid of an economical-looking but most flexible set (for which designer Guthrie Hutton deserves the highest praise) director David Bell has evolved a style of presentation which gave pace and How. Yet tie never made me feel that his experiments ...

... Comfort for all at the Top--Gallery Has Disappeared Re-opening after Major Improvements THE ORDEAL of sitting through long operas in sweltering heat on an uncomfortable bench in the gallery at Covent Garden is something of the nast From tonieht. when the curtain rises on Das Rheingold at the Royal Opera House there will be no gallery, but one vast top tier, known as the Amphitheatre. The ...

... THE opening performance o two cycles of Der Ring de Nibelungen starts the new season at the Royal Opera House this evening. Das Rheingold in the first cycle, will be followed on Saturday by Die Walkiire on September 12 by Siegfried and on September 19 by Gol terdammerung. The seconei cycle evenings are September 21 22. 24 and 26. Production is by Hans Hotter the scenery and costumes ...

... FOLLOWING the two cycles of The Ring, Fidelio will be presented at Covent Garden in the regular season on October 5, conducted by Norman del Mar. with Rlgine Crespin as Leonore. Vilem Pribvl will make his debut here as florestan. Jeannette Sinclair will be Marzelline and John Dobson Jacquino. For the first two performances Michael Lang- don will sing Roeco, Josef Greindl singing the part ...

... THE time allowed to bring the Royal Opera House's stage lighting up to date was short, little more than ten weeks. Yet it was a mammoth undertaking and equal, at least, to the large scale structural alterations which have been made to the theatre. Now, with 240 circuits, Covent Garden has the largest stage lighting installation in the British Isles. The 120 way dimmer board which Strand ...

... 'Operation Intense' Completed on Schedule INTENSE planning and close supervision were among the main driving forces that enabled Bovis, the principal contractor, to complete the work at the Royal Opera House in the scheduled time. There was a deadline of thirteen weeks, and this has been met with a slight margin They say that this is one of their most successful high speed operations. The ...

... Fonteyn and Nureyev 'THE performance of Swan Lake, danced at Covent Garden last Thursday, must be acclaimed as the finest this new production has yet enjoyed. And not for many a month have the critics been stirred to write with such a decree of unanimity when concerning the merits of the interpretations of M argot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev. The only defect to mar this truly bejewelled ...

... THE main feature of a double bill which opened at the Close Theatre Club, Glasgow, on April 13, was the premiere of Lunchtime Concert by Olwen Wymark, wife of Patrick Wymark. the actor. And this turned out to be compelling theatre probably the best production yet staged at the Close. It deals with the love-hate re lationship between a refined, but tatty', old woman and her tough, young ...

... Noel Coward Exposes Hugo Latymer in Song at Twilight' by R.B. MARRIOTT VEARS ago, a famous novelist 1 wrote a book called Cakes and Ale, in which, it was widely believed, Thomas Hardy and Hugh Walpole were pilloried. When Walpole. himself a generous, sympathetic, rather humble man. realized that in the character of Alroy Kerr he was being exposed as a pompous, mean-spirited fraud, he ...

... 'THE deepest roots of drama lie in the Greek tragedies, and Sophocles' Oedipus Rex is one of the strongest with its eternal story of incest, murder and guicide. The National Theatre of Greece presented this play at the Aldwych on April 14 as their second production in the World Theatre Season, and one expec ted a well-nigh definitive inter pretation. Alexis Minotis. who also directed, ...

... I WANT you to murder me for £3,000, the strange Mr. Franklyn asks down at heel and out of work Henry Scrubb, who considers the idea. After all, Franklyn said he was dying of an incurable heart disease, but if he was murdered the realisation of his life insurance policy would be doubled. Such is the plot of Derek Benfield's Murder for the Asking, the premiere of which was given at the De La ...