... Kingston A WHITE kidney shaped bar with crosses on two poles, white wicker chairs, a couple of sofas, a few pot plants and a splendid cast playing in the round gave Kingston Over- ground's first season of evening performances an electrifying start in a gripping production by Michael Poynor of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Tension was maintained with momentary relief by William Garrity who ...

... 'LES NOCES' COVENT GARDEN THE CLOSING phrases of Les Noces still give me a spinetingling sensation, for the impact of this Nijinska work, harnessed as it is to a particularly fine Stravinsky score, is as powerful as ever. It was revived by the Royal Ballet, now back at Covent Garden, on July 11, but without the scheduled Svetlana Beriosova as the Bride. Sad that we now see nothing of ...

... 'SO WHO NEEDS MARRIAGE?' THIS YEAR'S Brighton Festival production at the Gardner Centre, part-financed by John Gale, who hopes to bring it to London, was So Who Needs Marriage1 a new musical written entirely, books, lyrics and music, by one man, Monty Norman. It was directed by Roger Redfarn. This amomous new worn, with its Jewish-sounding title, tack les the socially disturbing subject ...

... Perth 'Dodwell's Last Trump' IT WOULD be unfair to describe William Watson's new play, Dodwell's Last Trump, which received its world premiere at Perth Theatre on November 26, as being all fun and games. Although it is keyed to the games spirit, its centre a party game which turns into a truth game, it has much to say that is sharply ironic and disturt>ing about the modern world, pitting ...

... Shaw 'Kidnapped at Christmas' Opened December 4 THERE ARE two ways of looking at any play for a child audience one of them is through the eyes of anyone of the age group for whom the work in question is intended; the other is as an adult, a critical adult in more than one sense. This can lead to a sort of double-think, a situation in which I found myself on the afternoon of December 4 at the ...

... ST-MARY ABBOTS TOO MANY CROOKS' THE current wave of Thirties nos talgia is still cresting high over the theatre, and an amateur group in London, the Inter Varsity Club, have created a musical called Too Manv Crooks which they performed at St Mary Abbot's hall between May IS and 17. Book, lyrics and music were all the work of clubs members, Joan Meier, Clive Chester and Peter Gladstone Smith ...

... 'NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE EXCEPT' A TWO-MAN show made up from two very different theatre personalities who work in two very different styles. How do you blend them? One answer lies in Nothing is Impossible Except! which Michelle Magorian and Peter Walshe presented at the Globe pub theatre (on the corner of Baker Street and Marylebone Road). Miss Magorian trained with Marcel Marceau, al ...

... Personality of the week DIANA FAIRFAX is always a pleasure to see; she is an actress of considerable talent, charm and personality. At present she is doing some of her very best work, as the dry-humoured, slightly zany May in Nicholas Wood's Chocolate Cake' at the King's Head Theatre Club in Islington. Ol i r, a r> a i _i one biuaiea a\ hmum. men naa some very good experience in repertory in ...

... CHICHESTER 'AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE' THE characters ot An Enemy of the People bring to mind the animal kingdomoddly,-- in a play of such moral tone Perhaps Ibsen set off the train of thought by nicknaming Morton Kiil the Badger. Whatever the cause, there they are, creatures of the Norwegian forests, instinctively reacting, prancing, skulking That lovable bear, Dr Stockmann, has for a ...

... GREENWICH 'HARDINGS LUCK' ALTHOUGH one remembers the 1970 Dick Whittington as perhaps the most rewarding pantomime ever seen, since then Greenwich Theatre have put on less traditional shows for young people at Christmas. For 1974-75 there is a dramatisation by Peter Nichols of E. Nesbit's Harding's Luck. The two authors suit each other very well, but I am not sure if the audience is as ...

... LYRIC 'BED BEFORE YESTERDAY' R. B. MARRIOTT Reviews Opened December 9 THE SECOND Lyric Theatre Company production, Ben Travers's new farce The Bed Before Yesterday, is as successful as The Seagull, which opened their season. Ben Travers is eighty-nine. This is his first play for more than twenty years. He was at his height in the Twenties and Thirties. It might have been thought that by ...

... Old Vic 'Hamlet' Opened December 10 LOOKING like a grisly farm-hand nearing middle-age. Albert Finney strides the stage of the Old Vic as a most unprincely Prince in Peter Hall's National Theatre production of Hamlet, in the full version. Four hours of Hamlet can be glorious; this four hours is not glorious at all but dowdy, dull, largely unprofit able. a rant without emotion, a telling ...