... 'Hasty Heart' revival THE SCOTS have a reputation for being dour and independent, but added to these, would it be possible to have a man who was also cold, rather insensitive to the feelings of others and very stubborn? This is the part that Richard Todd plays in The Hasty Heart by John Patrick, who wrote it in 1944. and the fact that Mr Patrick is a US citizen could have something to do ...

... SPECTRES OF MIDDLE-AGE IN 'CHEZ NOUS' by R.B. Marriott IN CHEZ NOUS, Peter Nichols' new play, at the Globe, Dick and Diana, on the strength of money brought in by Dick's best-selling book on child care and treatment, have bought an old house and its big bam in the Dordogne region of France. They are joined by old friends, Phil and Liz. All are in early middle-age, apparently happy and ...

... KING'S HEAD 'BLOOD KNOT' ATHOL FUGARD'S Blood Knot has been given an impressive revival at the King's Head Theatre Club in Islington. The drama of Morris Pietersen, who is white, and Zachariah Pietersen. who is black, is deeply moving. The setting, of a shack in a group of hovels near Port Elizabeth, South Africa, has been brilliantly designed by Vivienne Cart wright. Morris and Zachariah, ...

... BRISTOL 'MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING' THE OXFORD and Cambridge Shakespeare Company, who have been touring annually in the United States since their inception in 1967, will this year be taking Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Elijah Moshinsky, on a six-week Atlantic excursion. The com pany, mixing a professional production team with under graduate actors and technicians, chose the Little, ...

... Christian drama group A GROUP of Christian profes sional actors is taking two plays to the Edinburgh Festival this suhimer, The World of Mr Kadezzra by Cambridge University student Murray Watts, and James Goldman's The Lion in Winter. The Arts Centre Group, which was conceived about eight years ago by a number of people in the arts media including Cliff Richard, Ronald Allison and Nigel ...

... 'UNDER MILK WOOD' SHAW THE DOLPHIN Theatre Company presentation of Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood at the Shaw on June 24 is an outstandingly successful one. James Roose-Evans, the director, has allowed nothing to come between the play and the dience, using for scenic effect no more than a rake, a rope, a dozen or so hard-backed chairs and some splendid lighting by Do minic March. Thus, ...

... Northern Dance PIERS BEAUMONT has dug out a treasure from nineteenth century ballet, Bournonville's charming Flower Festival at Genzano. Mr Beaumont has reproduced the Divertissement of this 115-year-old work, and designed colourful costumes for the eight members of the Northern Dance i neatre wno presented it for the first time in their New Year programme at the Royal Northern College of ...

... Genee award THE ANNUAL Award Performance for young dancers competing for the Adeline Genge Gold Medal was held this year at Sadler's Wells Theatre on the afternoon of January 4. This important award, instituted in 1930 by Dame Adeline, Founder-President of the Royal Academy of Dancing, was given a new approach last year so that potential talent can be sought at an earlier age. The npu; m lino ...

... Festival Ballet ANY ATTEMPT to display the finished work of budding choreographers does a valuable service to the art of dance, for good ones are even rarer than good playwrights. London Festival Ballet are aware of this and staged another of their periodic Choreographic Even ings of new work at the Collegiate on December 20, with seven varied works danced mainly by members of the company. ...

... 'The Feast of Fools' THE FEAST OF FOOLS at the Round House is rather different from the usual Christmas holiday fare. But despite large helpings of cruelty and bawdy, it's as homely as mince pies or pantomime. Master Paddy Fletcher de la Zouche whisks us away with a joke on his lips and a leer in his eye to the cosy womb of medieval England. In the Baronial Hall of Poindexter Armbuster you ...

... A living Giselle OF THE MAJOR classical ballets in the normal repertoire, 'Giselle makes the most demands on the interpretative skills of the leading dancer, requiring her to dance the first act in a manner suggesting shyness, trust, simple joy and finally mental oreaKaown, while the second act demands an other-worldliness, but showing the last vestige of human feeling before it is sapped ...

... CAMBRIDGE, 'A BIT BETWEEN THE TEETH' Opened September 12 TWENTY-FIVE years on and Brian Rix is still making the West End laugh. Indeed, the latest effusion of the Theatre of Laughter is arguably the best of all the many farces Brian Rix has presented in the London theatre, a distinct development and improvement over those fifties misunderstandings con cerning gormless servicemen and ...