... 'AMERICA THE MUSICAL' NOT surprisingly, America the Musical drew the musical buffs out in force to the Shaw on Sunday March 21. This usual evening of songs from American shows not yet produced in Britain ranged through hits and flops, from a lively tap number to a couple of all-American embarrassments tne serious songs, in a popular vein. Living death to the less sentimental Eng lishman. ...

... THE OTHER FELLOW'S OATS' IMAGINE a play as far removed from Pinter as a play can be: where no character walks offstage to put a hot water bottle away without telling you precisely what she's doing; where no conversation opened fails to be well and truly wound up. That's James Pattinson and Peter Clapham s new comedy ineutner Fellow's Oats, given a tryout run at the Ashcroft. If it hadn't ...

... 'ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST' THE combination of comedy and tragedy can be the most powerful of dramatic experiences. And if as in Dale Wasserman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest based on Ken Kesey's novel, there is the added dimension of valuable social com-ment ther the experience can be that much more telling. RADA's recent production was certainly both powerful and telling, and ...

... 'LORCA' ALTHOUGH it errs on the presumption that an English audience automatically knows a great deal about the life, work and death of Federico Garcia Lorca (a programme note could well be helpful here), the effect of Sinclair Bailes's short one-woman play for Anna Nygh, Lorca. at the Little, about the poet-playwright s sister, is still one of immense involvement. Within a half-hour are ...

... 'SUR LE FIL' THE SECOND play in the French play season at the Greenwood must surely rate as one of the most stunning bits of sheer theatre in London. Arrabal's most recent play Sur le Fil opened two weeks' run on March 22 in a production by Jorge Lavelli which it appears has never played in a theatre before, let alone an English one. Max Bignens' designs work perfectly in their new home ...

... MAGIC '0' SHOW THE MAGIC O Snow is a children's theatre company with TIE overtones which is new come to London, although it originated over two years ago when its director, Pavel Douglas, was working in Edinburgh. A grant from the GLAA has enabled the seven-strong company to devise an attractive show for primary and junior school children Streaky Bacon's Breakfast Band. It is about, ...

... Briefly. DAVID BLENKINSOP, Concerts Director of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and Bournemouth Sinfonietta, has left to take up a post as Director of the Perth Festival, Western Australia. He has been on the staff of the Bournemouth orchestras for fifteen years and is succeeded by Christopher Robins, his assistant for the last four years. GLOUCESTER City Council is to present the ...

... New End 'Tsafendas' THE production of William Tanner's Tsafendas at the New End, which opened on March 30, is concerned with the assassination in 1966 of the South African premier, Dr. Verwoerd. by the title character, a mentally disturbed man of mixed parentage and chequered past. After its Hampstead season, the produc tion is transferring to the Tropen Institut Theater in Amsterdam. It ...

... Edinburgh 'Laurel and Hardy' LAUREL ANO HARDY. by Tom McGrath, at the Traverse Theatre Club, Edinburgh, is a warm hearted, instructive, and touching study of two comedians who were, as people, and as performers, much more than the rather simple clowns their film appearances would suggest. Clearly, the actors. Ian Ireland, who plays Oliver Hardy, and John Shedden, who plays Stan Laurel, had a ...

... Sheffield 'Nijinsky' NUINSKY danced like a god for tragically few vears before he decided he was God and took other fatal steps into the abyss of schizophrenia. It is on these years that Rex Doyle, who also directs, concentrates in his new play given its premiere at the Crucible Studio snetneia. Recognising that most of his audience will know that the great Russian went mad but probably ...

... 'HEADLOCK' BASED on the delightful conversion of a disused town hall into a much-used arts centre at Battersea is a new experimental theatre company, Salt Theatre. Their initial production between March 18 and 21 was a play devised by one of the group's two founders, Cindy Oswin. At its outset, I thought that Head- lock was yet another piece of genuinely popular theatre, for the set is a ...

... R.B. MARRIOTT REVIEWS 'SALAD DAYS' AT THE DUKE OF YORK'S Opened April 14 SALAD DAYS is here again, at the Duke of York's, as fresh, bright, tuneful and prettily simple as it was in 1954, when, coming up from Bristol, it became a hit for six years in the West End. Young lads and lasses and an assortment of parents, uncles, clergy and policemen gather in a sunlit world of magic and sweet ...