... 'THE END OF ME OLD CIGAR' R.B. MARRIOTT REVIEWS Opened January 16 JOHN OSBORNE'S new play, The End of Me Old Cigar, at Greenwich Theatre, has at its centre, and radiating influences, instructions, demands and commands, Lady Regine Frimley, who comes from the darker parts of London, but has risen in the world, to become the wealthy owner of a very high class brothel in one of the best of ...

... COCKPIT DOUBLE-BILL PARADISE Foundry began their spring tour on January 13 at the Cockpit with a double-bill written by Gabriel Josipovici and directed by the company's new permanent director Barry Edwards. Dreams of Mrs Fraser was originally seen at the Theatre Upstairs: this tion is more stark and uses less tricks, thus increasing its effective ness. The part of Mrs Fraser, the ship ...

... Personality of the Week THERE are a number of excellent performances in The Sash by Hector MacMillan, now at Hamp- stead Theatre Club, but perhaps ANDREW KEIR may be singled out because he co-directed the play with the author His study of the drunken, obsessed Orange man Bill MacWilliam is very fine, and the direction brings to the work great power and emotional strength, and reveals its ...

... RICHMOND ROYAL SCHOOL BOTH Upper School students and Lower School pupils joined forces for this year's Royal Ballet School week at Richmond Theatre, with programmes using the two sections together and separately. At the July 16 matinee the Lower School was seen in Permutations. a piece specially choreographed by Richard Glasstone with music com posed by Andrew West, and showing the senior ...

... 'THE PLUMBER'S PROGRESS' AT THE PRINCE OF WALES R.B. MARRIOTT REVIEWS Opened October 8 HARRY SECOMBE comes into his own as an actor in a straight play with his performance as Schippel in The Plumber's Progress at the Prince of Wales. The play, written in 1912 by Carl Sternheim, has been freely adapted by C. P. Taylor, one of our most interesting younger writers. The setting is Germany ...

... Sheffield The Great Sheffield Flood' THERE IS no doubt about the entertainment value of Rex Doyle's musical documentary, The Great Sheffield Flood, given its premiere at the Crucible Studio, Sheffield. The songs by Rodney Natkiel cover a wide range of styles-- from a pastiche patter song to romantic Dailaas to a more contemporary ioik sound and there is a bit of comedy, a bit of drama, ...

... PITLOCHRY 'COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS' STEWART Conn's Count Your Blessings was specially commissioned by Pitlochry Festival Theatre, with its premiere on May 23 timed to take place during the Plays and Places Festival promoted by the Scottish Tourist Board. Directed by David Birch, assisted by Charles Bell, it continues in the Pitlochry repertoire until July 12. It is about an ordinary man, on ...

... OXFORD 'HAPPY END' WITH its premiere of Michael Feingold's new translation of Bertholt Brecht's Happy End, with music by Kurt Weill, the Oxford Playhouse Company commemorated the 25th anniversary of the death of Kurt Weill and also marked the end of the present company s tirst sea son. In terms of direction, design and all-round performance and presentation, this was certainly the ...

... ICA The Dream of the Ridiculous Man' THERF. IS something peculiar about The Dream of the Ridiculous Man which is the Pip Simmons Theatre Group's contribution towards Christmas at the ICA. Granted that, after An Die Musik the company needed something which would bring passion and emotion to a quieter resting place, there remains a strange never-never world quality about the show which ...

... PATRICK MASEFlELD's new post as associate director of the Queen's, Hornchurch. with special responsibility for the late-night and touring productions, inaugurated itself on September 12 with Sticks and Stones. There are two shortish sketches in this entertainment-- anotner ot the Queen s exercises in black and white staging and they were originally presented when Mr Masefield was ...

... EVIL AND ODD Entertaining Mr Sloane takes things generally considered evil, odd and dangerous and uses them as means of revealing in a perfectly ordinary way the motivations and desires of Kath, Sloane and Ed, and, to a lesser degree, Kemp, Kath's brother, halt blind, who knows of Sloane's killing before the youth came to Kath as a lodger. Kath's passion for Sloane, which he wickedly ...

... Young Vic 'An Outburp of Hysteriffs' Opened October 21 AN Ourburp of Hysteriffs, a rather curious title, for a rather curious production. This latest epic at the Young Vic, an adaptation by Denise Coffey of John Lennon's little remembered books, was rather like an elongated end of term school concert. The English language, distorted beyond belief, was garbled by the ten characters in Stanley ...