... OLD VIC 'EQUUS' MEMORY CAN play strange tricks when recalling past theatre performances, often making them seem much better than they actually were. Equus is a magnificent exception, confirmed by a return visit to the Old Vic on November 15 when the new cast made the play a completely fresh and exciting experience. John Dexter's direction of Peter Shaffer's finely wrought text creates the ...

... LEATHERHEAD 'MAUDIE' Opened November 12 IF THERE is a matter for regret about Maudie, the musical diary based on Osbert Lancaster's Pocket Cartoon, at the Thorndike, Leatherhead, it is that Mr Lancaster did not design the decor. Apart from this artist's known brilliance in this field, he must surely know more about Drayneflete and its envir ons than anybody. In fact the sets were by ...

... Optical effects THEATRE Sound and Lighting (Services) Ltd have opened a new Optical Effects Division with Eddie Biddle, for so long the effects specialist at Strand Electric, as manager. TSL, as the company is now familiarly known, was founded a few years ago by a group of established theatre technology specialists of whom several, including Joe Davis, Ian Dow, and Cyril Grif fiths, had ...

... Islington 'Hank's Night' HANK'S NIGHT, presented at the King's Head Islington, is an odd sort of play to sit through at lunchtime. for it is about a dinner party, one of those up-market affairs where a couple of trendy and well-heeled marriage pairs who know each other well but not auite well enoueh find that the evening stretches long after the entree has been discussed and the brandy ...

... Puppets THE FIRST bursary for a writer to work with a puppet theatre has been awarded by West Midlands Arts to Richard Fawkes, a freelance film writer. He will be working at the Cannon Hill Puppet Theatre at the Midlands Arts Centre for Young People, Birmingham, during the coming months It is planned that performances of his play, based on a story from the Mabinogion (collec tion of Celtic ...

... Stratford East The Father' Opened July 21 IT HAS become a cliche to say that Strindberg did not like women; it takes a production of one of his plays really to drive the phrase painfully home. A sort of anti- feminist tract for any time. The Father has turned up at the Royal. Stratford East, in the Michael Meyer translation, tidily directed by Valerie Hanson and given a good visual ...

... DANCE THEATRE COMMUNE THE MAIN trouble with the Dance Theatre Commune, as far as can be judged from their week's season at The Howff on their way to the World Festival of Youth and Students in East Berlin, is that they woffle unbearably. Woffle choreographically, theatrically and artistically, for they display good intentions by the stepful, but never a finished product, and two hours is at ...

... Ballet Gulbenkian at 'The Wells' THE REPERTOIRE of Ballet Gulbenkian, which plays a season at Sadler's Wells Theatre from July to 14. will be Handel's Messiah, cho reography by Lar Lubovitch: Milko Sparemblek's Passa- caglia, music by Webem; Ar chipelago III, choreography by Carlos Trincheiras. music by Andre Boucourechliev, scenery and costumes by Artur Casais; Symphony of Psalms, cho ...

... Drums of Revolution THE STRUGGLE to survive, inequality and selfishness; the basic conditions of our lives, both personal and social. Of all playwrights, Brecht applied himself most directly to these issues, and Drums in the Night at Hamnstead Theatre Club until September 29 after a run at Edinburgh, is characteristic in its subject and its subtle treatment. The first of Brecht's play to ...

... Breughel Nightmare AND They Put Handcuffs on the Flowers, as directed by the author, Fernando Arrabal at the Open Space on September 12, turns out to be an essay in choreographing a Breughel nightmare for seven actors and a variety of properties. It is played with as much sincerity as the author brought to it in the first place, and most competently, but it is only fleeting images which ...

... Young Vic 'Othello' Opened October 7 ALFRED LYNCH makes his debut as a Shakespeare director with Othello, at the Young Vic, giving us a production of incisive intelligence and sensitive theatrical effectiveness. What the production lacks in depth of passion, power and overall conviction, is compensated by clarity of development, firm characterisation and verbal expres siveness. The staging ...

... Watford 'Out on the Lawn' A GARDEN is a lovely thing. God wot-- even when, as in Don Taylor's Out On the Lawn at Watford Palace from October 8. it is peopled with trendy left-wing intellectuals bent on combining the luxuries of the past with the comforts of the present and the sure knowledge that tney will be the kings and queens of the future. It is a play of words, although Don Taylor ...