... HELD UP for a day by the Canadian Airlines' strike, Codco opened late at the Collegiate. This Canadian experimental theatre troupe had been selected to initiate the new commercial lettings policy each summer at the Collegiate; it would be nice to say that the performance of Laugh Your Guts Out With Total Strangers on June 30 was worth waiting for and got the new venture off to a good ...

... FROM FILM to stage is not an uncommon translation but it is best that the origin should show too much. Unfortunately it is all too apparent at New End, where the stage version of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's acclaimed movie proceeds in a fashion whereby one almost expects sub-titles, despite the fact that the English of Delphine Seyrig. playing the title role in The Bitter Tears of Petra von ...

... HOLLAND FESTIVAL THEATRE THE AMERICAN Place Theatre, given the status of the most official contribution of the Bicentennial in terms of theatre was a disappointment. This company from mid-town Manhattan, and normally playing to 290-odd people in a skyscraper basement theatre, ultra-modern we are told, may not have felt at ease in the horseshoe-shaped Stadss- chouburg of Amsterdam. ...

... Chichester The Circle' Opened July 20 THE SOMERSET Maugham polish, irony, wit and theatrical panache are shining brightly at Chichester Festival Theatre, where The Circle, written in 1921, has joined the repertory. In addition to these attributes, there are titles, affluence, Parliamentary ambitions ble dresses and an elegant drawing room; all calculated to provide leisure entertainment ...

... Regent's Park 'Love's Labour's Lost Opened July 21 THERE IS a delightful production of Love's Labour's Lost at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre. Young love and young pretense, young vows and young ambitions are explored with a nice light comedy touch as the men who have foresworn women for study and the wumcii wiiu in v due uie vuuri ui Navarre battle joyously heart for heart. David ...

... Westcliff The Trail of the Lonesome Pine' WHEN PANTOMIME was invented, it took folk tales from all lands and was presented all through the year. Strange that the famous folk tales of America, Wild West cowboys and Indians, have been used so rarely. This musical, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, at Westcliff Pavi lion, has everything a good panto should have a colourful decor and costume, ...

... Domini Theatre 'Success Story' THE LONDON area Christian Arts Project, a predominantly evangelical concept although openly interdo- minational, has two drama areas--the use of word and movement within a church service to substitute for sermon or anthem or to illustrate some season of the church's year or contemporary issue of great impor tance, and the actual pertormance ot plays. Under ...

... A REVIVAL of The Fantas- ticks, claimed to be the world s longest surviving musical, is the next production at Norwich Theatre Royal, opening on Au gust 2 for two weeks. The cast includes Paul Jones, Derek Griffiths, Rosemary Wil liams, Richie Stewart and Chris topher Owen, and Tudor Davies directs. ...

... DRAMA STUDIO AT THE END of the second term of their one-year course, students of the Drama Studio mounted an interesting trilogy--three plays by Maxim Gorky which illuminate the years leading up to and culminating in the Russian revolution of 1917. Although the translations used were standard ones, the versions actually presented were largely the result of adaptation by the directors, ...

... LIGHTHOUSE THEATRE ON THE WAY into Crouch End from central London, there is one of those now disused church halls which are rapidly becoming focal points for community activities of all kinds. The Edison Road church halls, it is hoped, will house a range of activities from old aee pensioners' luncheon clubs to karate, from bingo to playgroups, from pottery to theatre. The Lighthouse Theatre ...

... 'Viva Espana' Bankside LOPE DE VEGA'S Fuente Ove- juna, which was written some where around 1614, has been hailed as the first class-war play; it shows a group of oppressed peasants in revolt against a tyrannical overlord. De Vega, however, had an ordered view of society, a Christian (Catho lic) one and he saw Guzman's offence as being equally against his own overlords (the reigning mon- ...

... 'A CHORUS LINE' AT DRURY LANE R.B. Marriott reviews Ooened July 22 THE LIVES of boys and girls of the chorus have often been shown in film musicals (and occasionally on the stage), but never before as in A Chorus Line, the Michael Bennett musical at Drury Lane. Mr Bennett's people of the chorus are men and women with lives away from the theatre. We see them auditioning for a new show, an ...