... FARNHAM REDGRAVE 'ROMEO AND JULIET' R.B. MARRIOTT REVIEWS THE CHARMING new Redgrave Theatre at Farnham opened with an impressive production of Romeo and Juliet a brave undertaking indeed. The building, with its open, jutting stage and tiered auditorium, spacious fover and delightful restaurant, is among the best new theatres I have seen, and all concerned with its creation as it were out ...

... Wendy Monk at CHICHESTER FESTIVAL-- 'THE CONFEDERACY' IN The Confederacy. the second production of the season at Chichester Festival Theatre, the symmetry of the plot presents two pitfalls: repetition and artificiality. The latter the director, Wendy Toye, makes no attempt to disguise nor the cast to leap. Members of the audience, who know Vanbrugh's The Relapse few will have had a ...

... HER MAJESTY'S 'PERICLES' NEW JOY wait on you, sang the whole company at the curtain, and wait on us it most certainly did. Indeed, I can't recall feeling such a sensation of joy after watching Shakespeare ever before. Of course, Prospect's glorious Pericles at Her Majesty's is very much the Bard a la mode, suitably enlivened with songs, slapstick and comic interludes for the groundlings ...

... SHAW 'THE KING' YET another exposition on the theme of King Arthur, this time entitled The King, written by David Cregan with occasional music by Brian Protheroe and Martin Duncan, was presented at the Shaw on May 23. That authors should be at tracted by this theme is easier to understand than the fact that few since the time of Malory have been able to make anything really worth while of it ...

... 'NIGHT MUST FALL' HYWEL BENNETT made his first stage appearance in his native Wales, playing Danny in Emlyn Williams's psychological killer-thriller-chiller Night Must Fall, at the Sherman, Cardiff. This is part he has always had a burning ambition to play, and his brilliant portrayal of the youthful Welshman with the fatal charm, provided a capacity first night audience with almost three ...

... Women's Theatre Group LAST SUMMER the Women's Theatre Group was formed to present a lunchtime season at the Ambiance Luchtime Theatre Club at the Almost Free. This season, organised with the co-operation of Inter-Action and financed by the Arts Council, ran for ten weeks from October through December to full houses. Four new plays by women playwrights were directed by women directors with ...

... DANCE Her acting is shown through dance, not in facial expression and as Odile she revealed her duplicity with nuances of movement based on echoes of the lakeside duet, while retaining strong individuality as Odile. Boris Akimov, too, made Von Rothbart's malevolence ap parent through movement, and his invisibility to Siegfried was justified in the climax, where his evil power was shown ...

... NATIONAL 'SPRING AWAKENING' IF THERE is a fault in Edward Bond's new translation of Frank Wedekind's Spring Awakening, presented by the National Theatre at the Old Vic on May 28, it is the somewhat unusual one of the translator having too much respect for the original author. It is his good fortune that current theatrical opinion has enabled him to restore the scenes of homosexuality and ...

... ACT INN 'ABEL, WHERE IS YOUR BROTHER' INTIMATE without being claustrophobic, the Act Inn, probably one of London's most pleasant fringe theatres, certainly seems to me the friendliest. And it was heartwarming to see even the landlord of the pub downstairs brimming with enthusiasm for the current evening production Abel, Where Is Your Brother? by the Russian author Julius Edliss. It's an ...