... 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, ...

... Personality of the Week JAMES ROOSE-EVANS inventive production of 'Under Milk Wood'' at the Shaw affords its cast the opportunity to present some striking cameos and one actress who has taken the collec tive eye of the critics is Frances Tomelty. Daughter of the greatly loved Irish actor Joseph Tomel ty. she has the ability to create a vivid characterisation with seem ingly little effort and ...

... QUEEN'S 'HAIR' IF THE 1999 preceding performances of Flair generated as much power as that at the Queen's on June 25, when the first of the rock musicals made its comeback, perhaps it is not so surprising that the Shaftesbury began to show signs of collapse. Sadly, though, the forces at work are not now those of a theatrical experience. With the burning of draft cards and free love no ...

... RUISLIP 'JIGSAW' JIGSAW, a new psychological thriller was given its first stage performance at the Winston Churchill Hall, Ruislip by the Aquarius Theatre Club. It was written designed and directed by Derek Hoddinott. Jigsaw was televised earlier this year and has been adapted as a radio play for a future BBC Afternoon Theatre. To say too much about the plot would be to divulge too much. ...

... 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 ...

... 'THE TWO PIGEONS' WITH LESLEY COLLIER dancing the girl in The Two Pigeons at the Covent Garden on July 8 and Ann Jenner the gypsy, the two boys dancing the corresponding male leads for the first time received the best of help. David Ashmole's study of the boy tended towards bad temper in his reactions to the girl's teasing, almost as if he resented her loving him. But in the gypsy camp scene ...

... BOLSHOI, 'NUTCRACKER' A RETURN VISIT to the Bol-shoi's Nutcracker at the Coliseum on July 15 produced not the expected EkaterLna Maxi- mova and Vladimir Vasiliev, but a change of cast with Nina Sorokina as Masha and Mikhail Lavrovsky as the Nutcracker ri ini.tr. Sorokina is, as might be ex pected, a technically proficient dancer, but her very strength does not make for credibility in this ...

... ROYAL BALLET SCHOOL THE WEEK of performances by the Royal Ballet School at Wimbledon (from July 8) was a test of their ability to recreate the same works night after night, and it was rewarding to see how some of this year's more promising students dealt with their problems. New to them was Cranko's duet Beauty and the Beast, with Lorna Murray's fresh young personality allied to a soft style ...

... Teach-in A SERIES OF teach-ins on var ious aspects of theatre was launched by the Theatre Arts Society at Wyndham's on the afternoon of June 25 when Fre derick Bentham gave the first lecture. In talk and demonstra tion, and a visit back stage, he explained technicalities and practicalities of lighting and staging. Different types of theatre and stage were described and illus trated by screen ...

... ALMOST FREE 'LENZ' MIKE STOTT'S dramatisation of a short story by Georg Buchner, in the evening at the Almost Free, is about the sort of an uninvited guest one would not wish upon one's worst enemy for a long weekend. I think the message of Lenz, if there is one, is that genius, particularly ius untrammelled, excuses all things, but if I had been in the place of Pastor Oberlin or his wife ...