... Personality of the week IN THE memorable Peter Hall production of John Gabriel Borkman for the National Theatre Company at the Old Vic there are a number of fine performances, including those of Ralph Richardson, Wendy Hiller and Peggy Ashcroft, as Borkman, Ella and Gunhild, but there is a young newcomer to the company who is also outstanding: FRANK GRIMES who plays Erhart. It is a tribute ...

... GUILDFORD 'HAY FEVER' FIRST performed just fifty years ago. Hay Fever has been revived for the latest time at the Guildford Yvonne Arnaud. Noel Coward said it was tapped out in three days, but although still bearing some superficial appeal, it is now no more than a trivial light comedy pastiche. This production has the asset of a turquoise 'twenties set by Pamela Ingram complete with ...

... LIVERPOOL 'THE CANTRIL TALES' LAST CHRISTMAS the Everyman gave their version of the Canterbury Tales. This year, six living authors, all Liverpool born or based, answer back with The Cantril Tales, named after a fairly new suburban housing estate. No less bawdy (in fact, a good deal more so) than Chaucer, the tales are set up to enliven the Scabby Inn thereby involving the Company in a ...

... DUBLIN PERHAPS the biggest competition that anyone writing directly about the North of Ireland has is the consistency of treatment in television and newspapers. How to present dramatically what is already presented with all the media resources of immediacy? How to compete dramatically with what is daily stark drama, already Theatre of the Absurd? With a first play, Eight Jumps and A Pair ...

... 'ENTERTAINING MR SLOANE' R.B. MARRIOTT REVIEWS Opened April 1 7 SO FAR as the play was concerned, the Joe Orton season at the Royal Court started very well, with Entertaining Mr Sloane. which, at the Arts, was both acclaimed and dismissed in 1964. There are some excellent performances at the Court, by Beryl Reid as Kath, Malcolm McDowell as Sloane and Ronald Fraser as Ed. But the ...

... GREENWICH 'THE BORAGE PIGEON AFFAIR' Opened May 14 THE REPUTATION of James Saunders, fostered a few years ago by Next Time I'll Sing to You and A Scent of Flowers, has not so far been greatly enhanced by the Charades season at Greenwich, which opened with his revision and completion of Vanbrugh's A ney to uondon in wnicn an ine uesi bits are Vanbrugh's. and now The Borage Pigeon ...

... MANCHESTER 'STAMPING GROUND' A NEW ballet by Jonathan Thorpe, Stamping Ground, was given its premiere by the Northern Dance Theatre in the opera theatre of the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, on March 18. Mr. Thorpe, who is one of the Company's two ballet masters, has set his new work to the music of J. S. Bach's Suite No. 5 in C Minor for solo cello. This is a rather sombre and ...

... COVENT GARDEN 'DANCES AT A GATHERING' SNOW lay on the ground outside Covent Garden on March 19, but inside all was Spring with the Royal Ballet revival of Jerome Robbins' Dances at a Gathering. This relaxed work, set to just over an hour of unadulterated Chopin, has a freshness which never seems to stale with repetition. The choreography is essen tially classical but by no means intense, ...

... Sadler's Wells 'David and Goliath' CHOREOGRAPHED jointly by Robert North and Wayne Sleep, the London Contemporary Dance Theatre's David and Goliath was given its first performance on November 25 at Sadler's Wells. On the second night, Wayne Sleep's role of David was danced by Ross McKim, a member of the com pany and, like Robert North, the possessor of a useful classical technique. The ...

... NEW END 'LAURA' BACK at the Theatre at New End, the Close Company this time offer a variation upon The Father of Strindberg lasting a little over an hour. Adapted and directed by Steven Dartnell, Laura is claustrophobic in its effect a succession of hammer blows without relief of tension which cause one to switch off one's own concentration in sheer self-defence from time to time. It is ...

... DRURY LANE INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL' A WIDELY-VARIED programme, both in content and standard, marked the gala at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on August 17, of this year's International Festival of Youth Orchestras and Performing Arts, which shares its activities between Aberdeen and London. There were artists working spendidily in indigenous style, like the Legon Drummers and Dancers of Ghana, ...

... ICA Indications Leading to the Mall' TO SAY THAT I disliked Lumiere Son's Indications Leading to the Mall almost to a point of no return is not to deny that the facet of violence within every human being which can be revealed by the merest hair's breadth shift of light does for theatrical comment. But not please! this farrago of nastiness which is unpleasant for no good reason which I ...