... DUBLIN 'GINGERBREAD LADY' THE TROUBLE with the pro duction of The Gingerbread Lady, characteristic Neil Simon potency, at the Dublin Eblana, is essentially the direction of Anna Manahan in the lead part of the blowsey, full-blown alco holic singer. Returned from a dry-out to a shabby, brown- stone apartment inhabited by a homosexual friend (Philip O'Brien) Miss Manahan's inter pretation is ...

... 'BULLSHOT CRUMMOND' AT HAMPSTEAD R.B. MARRIOTT REVIEWS Opened August 7 THE LOW Moan Spectacular are at Hampstead Theatre Club with their take-off of Sapper's Bulldog Drummond, Bullshot Crummond. Sapper entertained hundreds of thousands of readers between the two world wars with his Drummond yarns and they also drew big theatre and cinema audiences. Like many of his popular contempor aries ...

... BRADFORD 'THE KING' THE legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table has fascinated poets, painters, authors and playwrights for centuries, so much so that there would appear to be little more dramatic mileage left in the subject apart from the sort of total debunking David Cregan tried so unsuccessfully at the Shaw in London recently. Yet with his latest play. The King, Richard ...

... 'THE MAN WHO KNEW HE WAS JESUS CHRIST' MICHAEL G. Jackson's The May Who Knew He Was Jesus Christ, the latest evening production at the King's Head Theatre Club in Islington, begins extremely well, carries on very well, then, in the second act, goes totally to pieces. The child Jesus, born of a bingo-going type of working class woman, and a tall, fat rough Joseph, is seen in childhood and ...

... Israeli history EDINBURGH Pool Lunch Hour, Theatre are celebrating their third birthday with a brisk production of The Moshe Dayan Extravaganza by Michael Almaz, associate director of the Pool. The cast of three, Irene Sunters, Tutte Lemkow and the Pool's own director, Phil Emanuel, take the audience on a guided tour of Israeli history from the time of Abraham to the present day. To compress ...

... FARNHAM THE LORD'S LIEUTENANT' Opened November 13 'THE Lord's Lieutenant, a new play, and a serious one, by William Douglas Home, was given its premiSre at the Redgrave, Farnham. It had been specially written for the Redgrave by the author, who lives locally, and is president of the theatre appeal fund. All the action takes place inside a village church. A pop- singer, asked to open the ...

... 'Nutcracker' lack of style FURTHER VISITS to London Festival Ballet's production of The Nutcracker at the Royal Festival Hall prompt me to ask why this commercially successful presentation should at the same time be so unsatisfactory from an artistic point. In the main the dancers are hard-working and proficient, seemingly interested in their work in spite of two- and-a-half weeks of ...

... THE PLACE THE CAN OPENER' Onpnpd October 17 THE CAN OPENER by Victor Lanoux. in an English version by Charles Wood directed by Walter Donohue, is currently being presented by the KSC. at The Place One wonders why. This is the type oi one-m-ic. extended to a full length pUy which was intensely fashionable in London some fifteen years ago; so fashionable in fact that there was a plethora of ...

... YOUNG VIC TOM THUMB' Opened October 15 THE YOUNG Vic are giving the first professional production for almost two hundred years of Henry Fielding's 'The Tragedy of Tragedies, or the Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great. While Fielding's satire on stage styles and Royal George now cannot much intrigue us, there is sufficient material in the story of Tom Thumb and his exploits with the royal ...

... TERRACE SUBTITLES can be very revealing: Royce Ryton's The Importance of Being Neutral is subtitled A Charade in Three Acts and charade it most certainly was. The first act was a iine-for-line parody of Wilde's (rather more important) tance; the second act was Derek Fowlds trying to be Tqm Courtenay; and the third act was nobody's business, arbitrar ily springing off into travesties of ...

... Personality of the week AUDIENCES for Die Fleder- maus at the Coliseum are cur rently finding the production has an enjoyable bonus in Brian Casey, whose performance as Frosch the gaoler may be a long way from Strauss's Vienna, but in its outrageous style of music-hall comedy is absolutely right for London His drunken, good-hu moured reactions to both people and objects are brilliantly ...

... ROUND HOUSE 'HENRY THE FOURTH' BLEAK PROSPECT! One would have thought, with classical revivals of Shakespeare increasingly thin on the ground nowadays, that Kenny McBain's starkly ungimmicky productions of Henry IV, parts 1 and 2 currently in repertoire at the Round House somehow dwarf joined by Henry V, would seem refreshingly different. But the plays are so very subdued, muted from ...