... Be Prepared! RUDE JOKES about Girl Guides and being prepared probably date from the days of Baden-Powell himself. The Scout movement is, like the Church or the Monday Club, an obvious choice for satire. In Union Jack (and Bonzo), which reaches Hampstead Theatre Club by way of Edin burgh, Stanley Eveling makes the more obvious jokes with skill, and says few things besides. Despite the ...

... Cathedral multi-media REVELATIONS, the most mysterious book in the New Testament, has cried out for dramatic or film treatment and Adrian V. Benjamin's version, entitled Apocalypse, would seem to form a good basis from which to work. Described as a multi-media experience it is basically just that, part dramatised documentary, part oratorio, part ballet, part drama and all decked out with ...

... Brecht 'Mother' ANYONE UNCONVINCED of the genius of Bertolt Brecht should go and see The Mother, which opened at the Round House on July 2. Certainly not as sophisticated or as celebrated as his later plays, it's deliberately a very limited piece of Communist pro paganda. celebrating the ef forts of certain small-town Russian agitators in the period leading up to the 1917 revolu tion not, ...

... Jets and Sharks again THE REVIVAL of West Side Story, produced and directed by Bill Kenwright at the Collegiate on July 3, is a worthy effort in several ways. It is alive with enthusiasm; the dancing is very good indeed; the orchestra, under Ed Coleman, plays well. But the tragic story of the New York slums, where the natives, in the form of the Jets, and the interloping Sharks, battle ...

... Durrenmatt Strindberg THERE'S A PROVERB about rolling stones gathering no moss, and a poem with a phrase about a green thought in a green shade. Bernard Culshaw's designs for the Tyneside Theatre Company's production of Friedrich Dilrrenmatt's Play Strindberg at the Hampstead Theatre Club on July 3 were as sylvan as the play is urbane. It is a gloss on The Dance of Death, but Ga- reth ...

... 'Absurd Person Singular' fun and chill by R. B. Marriott ALAN AYCKBOURN'S latest comedy. Absurd Person Singular, at the Criterion, is very well designed for popular laughter, technically and verbally, yet has a chilling element which produces a feeling of sadness. His characters, or caricatures are three married couples who spend three successive Christ mas Eves together, party fashion. ...

... '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 ...

... Prospect Company 'Pericles' THE CALAMATIOUS adventures of Pericles, Prince of Tyre, are not as well known as some of Shakespeare's more popular heroes. This, it is claimed, is partly because of the play's brothel scenes. Yet it is this very aspect which the Prospect Theatre Company have seized upon for their production of Pericles at the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh. Eastern cushions are stre./n ...

... Ptnlip Voss as Mr Purdie and Helen Cotterill as Mrs Purdie in Edgar Wreforcfs current production of Barrie s Dear Brutus at the Oxford Playhouse. ...

... Lite Is A Dream BY THE MIDDLE of the 17th century, Spain had nearly completed her own isolation from the mainstream of Europe, both Catholic and Protestant, in matters social, political and artistic. Calderon de la Barca's play La Vida es suefio poitomises this ostrichism even in the new Roy Campbell translation which Another Theatre Company staged at the Mercury. Life Is a Dream comes ...

... Royal Court TWO APPOINTMENTS made by the Royal Court are of Ann Jellicoe, who becomes Literary Manager, and Michael Abben- setts, who has been named as Resident Dramatist. ...