... 'KING LEAR' AT STRATFORD R. B. Marriott reviews THE THING itself: the forked animal. The poor human being lying there, on the bleak heath, forlorn, stricken; as Lear and the Fool look on. speaking in awe and wonder. Before that, Lear starting out on his new phase of life, believing he has olanned for the best: and the appalling outcome of that plan. Then, afterwards, Lear made greatly human ...

... THE HUMAN VOICE' WHAT A TRAP for an unsuspecting actress is Jean Cocteau's The Human Voice, and how easily Jennifer Lipman fell into it at the Little. It is an extremely difficult ROGER SLOMAN is climaxing a year in which he has done excellent work on stage and TV with an outstanding performance in the highly amusing Fosdyke Saga' at the Bush piece to perform on stage, requiring the actress ...

... Criterion 'I Gotta Shoe' Owned December 15 ANYTHING that brings Elisabeth Welch back into the theatre is welcome, and although a bout of laryngitis made her all but hors de combat for the first night of I Gotta Shoe at the Criterion, like a trouper she Dretended she hadn't got it. This Caryl Brahms-Ned Sherrin musical on the Cinderella story a panto for adults takes up the second half of the ...

... WILD OATS' AT THE ALDWYCH R. B. Marriott reviews Opened December 14 WARM, witty and charming, John O'Keeffe's Wild Oats emerges from the dark of oblvion at the Aldwych in a dazzling production by the Royal Shakespeare Company. O'Keeffe (1747-1833) was proclaimed by Hazlitt as the English Molifcre. His plays were popular, and Wild Oats went on being so practially throug hout Victorian ...

... The Dream Juggler' HIDDEN somewhere under the wash of tautly non-representational sets and grimly authentic accents and life-styles on every sort of London stage there are obviously lurking storm-troopers of romanti cism. It can take the form of an outbreak of nostalgia, a trip to the theoretically comfortable past, or it can be just plain fantasy, lyric, gothic, chilling, or whatever. That is ...

... Half Moon 'The Good Woman of Wapping' HAVING decided that Brecht's The Good Woman of Setzuan was not entirely apposite for Aldgate in a straight version, the Half Moon Theatre has brought it up to date and into place as The Good Woman of Wapping, devised and directed by Shane Connaughton, with music from Mark Brown, Terry Dougherty and Brook Hoadley. The treatment works very well, even ...

... Nottingham 'Trumpets and Drums' AMERICANS celebrating the bicentenary in this part of the world might drop into the Nottingham Playhouse because Trumpets and Drums involves the War of Independence. But only marginally. Basically it is Farquhar's The Recruitine Officer, updated 70 years by Brecht so as to include snorts by the English over the upstart Declaration of Independence (Where ...

... Michael Aspinall IT IS easy to visualise Michael Aspinall's drag prima donna being a riot at private parties, but for stage purposes I feel his quite original act needs the strong guiding hand of a good director. Mr Aspinall's one-night stand at Brighton Royal (May 14) showed only too clearly the truth of the old rule that humour ceases to be funny when the perpetrator is too conscious of ...

... THE I. K. BROWEL SHOW' THE PREMIERE of a new musical, The I PC. Brunei Show, took place in Cornwall at Saltash, an event which marked the building in 1857 of the Brunei Bridge which connected Devon and Cornwall by rail. Presented by the Fiymoutn Theatre Company and written and directed by Simon Dunmore with some lively folksy musical numbers by Richard Piper, the show tells the story of the ...

... EXILIAD' THE LATEST show from Bruce Lacey and Jill Bruce Galactic Theatre is Exiliad, an epic they according over the past year. Given its premiere at Chapter Arts Centre. Cardiff, it traces the evolu tion of Earth and Man right up to the totalitarian state where an Orwell type court convicts Mr and Mrs Lacey of doing their own thing, wanting to be individuals and refus ing to conform. They ...

... THE WORLD'S GREATEST THEATRE COMPANY' ITS A LONG time since we had improvised entertainment at lunch-time. so the brief visit of The World's Greatest Theater Company (Little, October 26) was a welcome reminder of what can be achieved in this sphere. The group consists of three Americans; tall and bronzed Tom Murrin, petite Johanna Went and plumpish Craig Olander, and their act consists of ...

... less than convincing as the disastrously passive hero of Shakespeare's tragedy is a Hamlet who, with practically his first breath, bares his teeth into an alarmingly vicious snarl to complain that he is too much in the sun, who gurgles with delight to discover that he has slain Polonius, and who is capable of blowing raspberries at his uncle the King. With a son like that, need his ...