... Stoke pioneers' SCREAMING and shouting, 200 children invaded the audi torium of the Victoria, Stoke- on-Trent, bounced on the seats and heckled the actors. But it was all part of a plan devised by former Vic actor. Christ opher Martin. He had returned to Stoke to write and direct the children's summer play. The Pioneers. The play, or entertainment (for there is no set script) is based on the ...

... Jim Dale is a hit in The Card' DENRY MACHIN, the extraordinary man invented by Arnold Bennett for his novel The Card, has a colossal self-centredness, an irrepressible nature and an energy which make him an eminently suitable character for the cal which opened at the Queen's on July 24. The book by Keith Waterhouse and Will is Hall shows Machin's success ful rise to fame and fortune as ...

... PETER SHAFFER EXPLORES YOUTH'S MENTAL WORLD by Douglas Blake PSYCHIATRY can remove a passionate obsession from a man's brain, but in destroying the obsession it leaves a void that can never be filled. In his new play Equus, Peter Shaffer explores the strange mental world of a youth who has blinded six horses with a metal spike, and the uncovering of the layers of mental anguish hiding the ...

... 'Water Babies' is ideal for the children's hols CHRISTMAS used to be the only time for children's shows in the West End, but last Easter saw a few and now, to coincide with the summer holidays, comes a spankingly good production of The Water Babies at the Royalty, where it opened on July 24 for a six- week season of twice-daily matinees. Charles Kingsley's famous story about the little ...

... 'Dandy Dick' fun is furious THIS YEAR'S production of Pi- nero's Dandy Dick at the Chichester Festival Theatre may be out of the same stable asv 1969's successful The Magistrate but the bloodlines are different. The fun is furious, but not always fast, and there is an overall elegance about the proceedings that leads the audience to stop to think, when they should be catching breath ...

... The Thrie Estates' is back at the Edinburgh Festival TO BORROW the language of the film world, Sir David Lindsays The Thrie Estaites is something of a golden oldie of the Edinburgh Festival. It is fondly remembered as the big discovery of the early years when Tyrone Guthrie took post-war audiences by storm with his exciting presentations in the Church of Scotland As sembly Hall, ...

... Rabelaisian TO SET the scene for the evening's entertainment, members of the audience arriving for Russell Hunter's readings from the works of Rabelais in one of Edinburgh's most famous masonic halls, are plied with wine, bread, cheese and iruu. The programme note speaks of Rabelais' appetite for joy in living and the translator of his works is quoted on his out spokenness. And, in case ...

... 'Don Juan in Love' THE life and loves, particularly the loves, of Don Juan have fascinated poets and playwrights down the ages. At the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh, after the torments of Pericles, the Prospect Theatre Company are staging their first venture into Festival late-night enter tainment with a gentle examination of the great lover in verse and prose. Don Juan in Love is 90 minutes' ...

... 'Sleep of Reason' THE Sleep of Reason is less a play than a harrowing document written in a greyness of the spirit about man and his distress-filled mind. Its statement is dry and plain rather than aggressive and it is acted in simplicity by the Theatre Unlimited company at the Traverse Theatre Club, Edinburgh. The play examines the trou ble mind at home and abroad. On the domestic scene ...

... 'Cambusdonald' THE EDINBURGH PEOPLE'S Theatre, steadfast exponents of native Scottish comedy, present in this year's Edinburgh Festival fringe productions James Scotland's Cambusdonald Royal, directed by Marillyn Gray. Cambusdonald Koyal is a Scottish comedy which has style. The auld Scots speech marks its sturdy texture upon the ear, the main performances get invigorating caricature and the ...

... Drums in the Night' PLAYS FOR THE ordinary man like Drums in the Night are not often seen at the Edinburgh Traverse. Concerning plain folk with evident problems and common anxieties and holding some approach in common sense, such work needs only to be well written and well performed and it satisfies. Bertolt Brecht, adapted in Drums by C. P. Taylor, had this clear advantage. He evokes a ...

... Dreyfus THE premiere of the new play by Michael Almaz, Dreyfus on Devil's Island, turns out to be a monologue. Presented at the Pool Lunch Hour Theatre, Edinburgh, it is another essay into making the words flesh by presenting an account of a personality, and his circums tances, on stage. David Mouchtar-Samorai is the actor to make a perform- mance, this time, out of words which might as ...