... / Elspeth Grant, There's a wink in the voice of the narrator, John Dehner, as he introduces The Hallelujah Trail (U) with a solemn account of the sad state of affairs in Denver City, Colorado, in 1867, when, through a combination of most unfortunate circum stances, only 10 days' supply of whisky remained in the whole community to see the hard- drinking miners through the rapidly approaching ...

... ' John Salt It can be said of Bertolt Brecht without inviting controversy that he was a fast man with a written word, and that his literary output was impressive. There is, in fact, a great deal of Brecht from which to choose, and we in London over the past ten years have been privileged, or condemned-- depending on your point of view-- to see the bulk of it. The latest Large Helping from the ...

... I Elspeth Grant Richard Lester, the director of Help! (U), was recently quoted as wondering whether he had done right by the Beatles in this, their second film. I must say I think he did righter by them in A Hard Day's Night, which he also directed. There they were very much them selves: we saw them on stage and in the recording studio, we watched them larking in hotel rooms, dodging their ...

... Pat Wallace It is almost a classic dictum that plays with an effective court scene are bound to be successes. By the same token, if the entire action of the play takes place in a law court there is a good chance that the success will develop into a smash hit. So it has been from the faraway days of The Trial of Mary Dugan (which, I believe, started the trend) to a present example in Hostile ...

... Elspeth Grant/ They're building a gallows smack outside the jail in Wolf City and all the local citizens are gloatingly gathered around it to watch the hanging of the pale and terrified young girl who's despairingly watching them from the window of her cell-- and there's Cat Ballou (A) off to what I'd say is a fairly chilling start for a spoof Wes tern described by its publicists as a funny ...

... J. Roger Baker/ Sex, religion, black magic and demonic possession must rank high as ingredients for instant success in the theatre. All occur in Prokofiev's opera, The Angel of Fire, produced at Sadler's Wells by the New Opera Company, yet the work ultimately fails to make the expected impact. It was com posed between 1919 and 1927, just after Prokofiev had com pleted 77ie Love of Three ...

... Elspeth Grant It's not all that easy to bur lesque a burlesque, and the James Bond films so blandly guy themselves, you'd scarcely believe anyone else would dare try to take the mickey-- but if Licensed To Kill (U), directed by Lindsay Shonteff, is not an airily naughty send-up of the Ian Fleming series (and good old 007 and all his ways and exploits), I must have got the wrong message. Tom ...

... I Oliver Warner I have sometimes wondered whether the perfect reader for a book about Oxford is not a Cambridge man, who can bring to it the necessary detachment and, I should hope, a lack of prejudice. Certainly William Gaunt's Oxford (Batsford 25s.) has found an appreciative client in your reviewer. It is by no means a straight guide book, though no major sight is omitted. It is more of a ...

... Gerald Lascelles Much is talked and written about the present day influence of jazz on popular music, and I find it appropriate that a record company has taken the trouble to put together a col lection of pop music from the '20s that not only traces an im portant era in history but also illustrates the link between Dixieland jazz and pop music of the day. The Original sound of the '20s (CBS) ...

... Spike Hughes Why do composers get so solemn in their old age? Apart from one or two-- like Verdi, Rossini and Monteverdi-- the rest of them seem to grow gloomier and gloomier. Even Stravinsky, who had a sense of fin when he was young, is now as long-faced as any of them. Fortunately, Ernest Ansermet has remembered that Stravin sky wasn't always that way, and on one record (Decca mono and ...

... John Salt/ A new and noteworthy name is welcomed to the West End in Pauline Macaulay whose play The Creeper is at the St. Martin's Theatre. The occasion also served to welcome the return of that disciplined and sensitive actor Mr. Eric Port- man in a role so specially suited to his talents that he might almost have written it for himself. The Creeper can he enjoyed on a variety of levels; as a ...

... Oliver Warner The writers of reviews, says a character in my first item, with their facile charity and their sudden dislikes, really tell one nothing at all. Not even whether a book is good or bad? Likable or otherwise? It seems to me (for what it is worth) that An Acre of Grass by J. I. M. Stewart (Gollancz 21s.) combines the two parts of this author-- the other part is of course Michael ...