... Cold Storage EDINBURGH THE LYCEUM Little Theatre in its final fling presents Cold Storage, by Ronald Ribman, on the Edin burgh Festival Fringe. As the first offering of the Royal Lyceum Thea tre's new director, Leslie Lawton, it proves an unfortunate choice. The attractive white-walled set, by Claire Lyth, is the rooftop sun-place of a New York hospital where two patients sit in wheel chairs ...

... Double Double SCARBOROUGH HOLIDAYMAKERS get a laugh a line in James Saunders' Double Double--a sort of On the Buses set in a bus garage canteen--and which is being presented at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in the Round at Scarborough as a lunch-time production. It has all the ingredients of the highly successful television series the minor irritations which become insurmountable problems; ...

... The Magic Flute WALTHAM FOREST IN LONDON, the amateur and semi-professional opera ensembles and workshops can call upon the services of an ever-increasing pool of young professional singers, producers, conductors and designers itching to take part at a senior level in works they normally merely prop up in other artists, realisations. Be cause the new entertainments assistant for the London ...

... Dance Theatre of Harlem SADLER'S WELLS THE SENSATIONAL impact made by the Dance Theatre of Harlem on their first visit to London can hardly be expected to be repeated, and it is a tribute to their established quality that we now compare them with all the other leading companies of the world. There have been large-scale cnanges ot personnel since they were last here and Balanchine's ...

... The Pearl Fishers WELSH NATIONAL OPERA THE DECISION of the Welsh National Opera to revive its production of The Pearl Fishers, is a happy one indeed. With what amounts to a new cast and a dynamic French conductor making his debut with the company, the John Moody production has not only? been given a new lease of life, but improved enormously. Opera buffs tend to be a trifle patronising about ...

... Paco Pena EDINBURGH IN ALL the portentous phraseology of artistic criticism from the Edin burgh Festival two words rarely appear. They are happy and entertainment. Let us acknowledge nrstly that in tne late night performance given by Paco Pena's Flamenco Puro at the Royal Lyceum there is rich entertainment and that the singers, dancers and guitarists are happy in their work. Like all folk ...

... The Shadow Box CAMBRIDGE THE SHADOW BOX at The Arts. Theatre, Cambridge, is the Cam bridge Theatre Company's 56th pro duction. The author, Michael Chris topher, takes as his subject terminal illness, and the reactions of three patients, their relatives and friends to the knowledge of their imminent decease. Joe (Thick Wilson) grosslv overweight, is comparatively inarti culate and remains ...

... The Tempest OLD VIC THE Richard the Third and Hamlet of the Young Vic Action Man trilogy have now been joined by The Tempest in the main Old Vic theatre. Last year, the series, directed by Michael Bogdanov, was very successful, and the new season, lasting until March 31, is attracting large audiences, young people being particularly prominent. A comment I overheard may be indicative ...

... ENGLISH NATIONAL OPERA Siegfried KENNETH WOOLLAM sang the title role of Siegfried for the first time in the English National Opera's revival on February 28. He was strikingly successful in conveying youthful ardour and fearless vigour, showing a considerable range of expression from tenderness in the mother revelations to pastoral lyricism in the forest scene and virility in the forceful, ...

... Billy Budd ROYAL OPERA BILLY BUDD, perhaps Britten's best opera, was given a striking and stirring revival at Covent Garden on March 5. The nautical atmosphere, the overall picture of 18th-century naval life, with its contrasts of harshness and sensitivity, the fundamental analysis of the human condition, the constant expressive ness and originality of the music, with chorus used ...

... YOUNG VIC Class Enemy Opened March I IN a shabby classroom in South West London, form 5K are teaching themselves. A teacher visits them only intermittently twice in the play, one a half-nour span and then it is not to teach but to sort out the matter of some broken windows or to remonstrate with the boys for breaking up tne turniture ana dioo- dying each other's noses. As he is a master ...

... TOUR Ten Times Table SUSPICION is sometimes legitimately aroused when a play has to resort to light failures and strange sound effects for funny relief and these are a couple of the contrived ingredients of Alan Ayckbourn's Ten Times Table, starting its post- London tour at the Yvonne Arnaud Guildford. Perhaps a reason for such devices is to cloak the basically static situa tion the ...