... Production worthy of The Seagull's status First-rate drama from BBC-2 BY KARI ANDERSON 'T'HF. Seagull occupies a unique place in theatre history: it was the first Chekhov play performed at the Moscow Art Theatre, an event commemorated by the seagull motif on the theatre's curtains. The BBC-2 Theatre 625 production, in George Calderon's translation, edited for television by Rose mary Hill ...

... By KARI ANDERSON PAMELA FRANKLIN, Teddy Green and David Griflin are engaging young people, Colin Bell plays one not so engaging, and all turn in good performances in the new BBC-1 early Saturday evening serial. Quick Before They Catch Us. Pamela's accent does little to convince as that she is a bus-driver's daughter from Bristol, but she looks mighty fetching. The first four-part story, ...

... BY BILL NORRIS WHEN you look at the long list of those appearing in Redilfusion's Five O' CIock Club, you wonder how director Daphne Shadwell is going to fit them in. That she does so and very smoothly is a tribute to her direction. The edition I watched was on May 6, and Muriel Young was back as com- mire. One of the best singers I have heard for many a day- on this sort of programme -is ...

... BY MARJORIE NORRIS AT first sight it seems a daring experiment to slip three half hour plays by N. F. Simpson into BBC-2's schedules in the guise of a comedy series. But is it so daring? There has been no set pattern about the comedy shows that have turned up in mat *uuroay evening v.iu spot, and the audience which has welcomed Not Only Bui Also should take the topsy turvy logic of N. F. ...

... Bed- time story BY N. ALICE FRICK THE short single-shot play is coming back into its own on television. BBC-1 provided a bed-time story from the North on Friday, October 28, in Out of Town Theatre. Bill Naughton's new play, produced by Vivian A. Daniel in chester, was Seeing a Beauty fjueen Home, and it was just right as the last show before close down. Time: 1928, occasion: after the ...

... rILIIIa FIRST FIVE: 1 Cul-de-Sac. 2 Ivan the Terrible. 3 Becket. 4 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 5 Mary Poppins. Right from the opening credit titles, which resemble nothing more than two rain bows fighting over possession of a crock of gold, it's pretty obvious that Stanley Donen is prepared to resort to all the tricks in the cinematic bag to make Arabesque (A, Leicester Square Theatre, ...

... THcHTRE Accent on the ladies this week, with Fenella Fielding moving from The Mermaid to the Comedy in Let's Get a Divorce, and at the Strand Honor Blackman making her first stage appearance for a dozen years in Wait Until Dark. In many ways both actresses have managed to shed their respective images, built up over the years, for these appearances. Miss Field ing, instead of appearing like a ...

... nuns I would be wise not to make too many cutting (ouch!) re marks about the length of Nevada Smith (A, Plaza, Piccadilly Circus, currently), as I have been told that, since the magazine showing of the film, cuts have been made which have proved of great benefit. I think, though, that it s only because I like watch ing Westerns so much that I enjoyed watching Steve Mc Queen as a country boy on ...

... FIRST FIVE: 1 Noel Coward double bill. 2 Arsenic Old Lace. 3 Hello Dolly! 4 Man Superman. 5 Incident at Vichy. One thing you can say about the theatre-- it's always being enthusiastic about itself, always pushy, always sound ing off, always trying to be the most important thing around. It needs to be like this, of course. For basically the British are not a great theatre- going public. They'll ...

... BI1LLET Playwright David Rudkin was recently quoted as say ing that ballet is never an escape into reality. Well, of course it isn't-- we see enough of reality outside the theatre without getting it in a concentrated form in dancing. And, anyway, if we want to be reminded of this ter rible world, we can always go to Afore Night Come or Saved. The sooner ballet gives up the idea of trying to ...

... Films FIRST FIVE: 1 Pierrot le Fou. 2 Viva Maria! 3 Othello. 4 Doctor Zhivago. 5 Alphaville. There is no sadder sight in the whole Hollywood galaxy than that of the waning star. In the forthcoming film The Moving Target the character who asks of a former child star What ever happened to Fay Esta brook? is answered with cruel accuracy. She got fat. Shelley Winters, to whom the years have ...

... by Isaac Bashevis Singer, translated from the Yiddish by A H Gross. The decline of European Jewry over the last 50 years. The novel spans the period from before the 1914-18 war until the invasion of Poland. At the beginning, the family is prosperous, united, orthodox; by the end it is dispersed, sceptical, impoverished. The two main characters are Abram, the lover of women, and Asa the thinker ...