... PENTAMETERS MOST of expatriate Robert Calvert's stage work so far has been with a high musical content, so it is not perhaps surprising that his short play The Stars That Play With Laughing Sam's Dice has a musical background. The rock star Jimi Hendrix, who burned himself out in the tragic pattern set by so many artists on the trapeze of success, was for a short time a paratrooper and ...

... Bartok ballets THE ONLY REAL fault with the Hungarian State Opera and Ballet's first programme at the King's, Edinburgh, was the length of the interval between these two comparatively short works, Bluebeard's Castle by Bartok, and The Miraculous Mandarin, music also by Bartok, choreography Laszlo Seregi. It arrested the undoubted sense of satisfaction felt at the masterly presentation ...

... Aldwych 'The Iceman Cometh' A DRAMA as monumental as it is magnificent. Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh. receiving its first London production for twenty years, is one of the finest things the Royal Shakespeare Company has done at the Aldwych. Everything about it, the carefully paced direction by Howard Davies. the marvellously sleazy setting by Chris Dyer, the fine ensemble playing by ...

... Greenwich 'Joan Turner Unlimited' JOAN TURNER'S latest show, Joan Turner Unlimited-, is delighting a late-night audience at the Greenwich Theatre from June 15. The woman artist who is prepared to send herself up rotten is thin on the ground, but Miss Turner cheerfully comes on in a swish of shocking pink chiffon, feathers and frills (found in Dorothy Squires' dustbin, she informs us) and ...

... Leicester 'Gunslinger' THE new sheriff solemnly takes his oath of allegiance. He pins on the shining star of office and another era in American history has begun. For the sheriff is a notorious gunman, eagerly recruited to kill his kind by townsfolk who fear him. This moment of spurious solem nity is part of Gunslinger, by Richard Crane, Fellow in Creative Writing at Leicester University, ...

... Theatre Workshop 'Rashomon' ANCIENT Japan á la mode de Stratford-atte-Bow the story we know from the film Rashomon, from traditional Japanese theatre or any of the western stage versions-- the most recent was that of the Theatre of the Deaf-- in a script by Fay and Michael Kanin and a production by David Mouchtar. Rasho mon opened at the Theatre Royal, Stratford E.15, on June 16 and ...

... Personality of the week IN THE memorable Peter Hall production of John Gabriel Borkman for the National Theatre Company at the Old Vic there are a number of fine performances, including those of Ralph Richardson, Wendy Hiller and Peggy Ashcroft, as Borkman, Ella and Gunhild, but there is a young newcomer to the company who is also outstanding: FRANK GRIMES who plays Erhart. It is a tribute ...

... GUILDFORD 'HAY FEVER' FIRST performed just fifty years ago. Hay Fever has been revived for the latest time at the Guildford Yvonne Arnaud. Noel Coward said it was tapped out in three days, but although still bearing some superficial appeal, it is now no more than a trivial light comedy pastiche. This production has the asset of a turquoise 'twenties set by Pamela Ingram complete with ...

... 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 ...

... 'LET THE GOOD STONES ROLL' AT THE AMBASSADORS Peter Hepple reviews Opened March 29 STRIPPED down to its essentials, the Rolling Stones saga is an everyday story of musical folk--five teenagers, brought together by a mutual interest in old Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters records, form a band and find success beyond their wildest dreams. If it is more than that, it is what we have made it. ...

... Zigomania BUSH THE characters in Tony Bicat's play Zigomania at the Bush Theatre are all teetering over yawning gaps which divide them--the young Englishman who is in Paris during May 1968 never really finds himself on the same wave length of political tervour as his French raries; the older generation, one an ex-Panzer transexual and the other washed up from the Resistance, can't ...