... 'STEVIE' AT THE VAUDEVILLE Susan Corbett reviews Opened March 23 I'M LOW on energy, says Glenda Jackson's Stevie in Hugh White-more's dramatic portrait of Stevie Smith, the poet. Funny: till then it had seemed that energy was the lady's middle name. Perhaps she means that she reserves her energy for the important things in life: her relationship with her beloved sur- burban aunt, and her ...

... In the Red WHITEHALL Opened March 25 DADDY (playwright David Clifton) is in the red. To the tune of a measly £11.000. For some reason or other, his ungentlemanly bank manager Charles Bentworth takes it into his head to stop cashing Daddy's cheques: did you ever hear anything like it? So what will poor Daddy do then, poor thing? Write a new play? Get a decent job? Cut down on his gambling? ...

... Vampire BUSH SNOO WILSON'S Vampire at thf Bush Theatre has a third act completely rewritten from the original of some ten years ago. In fact, it is less a case of three acts than of three short plays with a tenuous thread of family woven with one of theme to hold the web together--the bloodsucker of me uue is less a maucr ui ui ...

... Gimme Shelter GIMME SHELTER, Barrie Keeffe's trilogy of short plays first seen at the Soho Poly in early February, has now transferred to the Royal Court, where the most powerful impact is still made by the middle play, Gotcha. This pene trating study of a 16-year-old school-leaver, suffering the frustra tions and anonymity of existence at a comprehensive school, gives a splendid chance to ...

... Fire Angel HER MAJESTY'S Opened March 24 FIRE ANGEL. said to have cost a quarter of a million pounds, is now in full flame at Her Majesty's and will probably keep burning away as long as there are audiences for rock opera. But was all this expenditure worthwhile? The set and costumes are gaudy, the show gives employ ment to around thirty actors and almost twenty musicians divided into three ...

... Haymarket Theatre: some new faces LOUIS MICHAELS has completed arrangements with the Board of the Frederick Harrison Trust Ltd for a new company in his ownership, the Theatre Royal, Haymarket Ltd, to take over the management of the Haymarket Theatre for a number of years. The directors of the Frederick Harrison Trust will join Michaels and his colleagues on the board of the new company and Mrs ...

... The Street BELFAST JOHN BOYD'S The Street which is having its premiere at the Lyric Players Theatre in Belfast is his fifth stage play and part of the cycle which began with The Assassin. The street is in the seedy Bally- macarett area of the city where Bob Downie and his wife Jane live in a house at the corner, facing a pub into which three unemployed youths come and go. Bob is a railway ...

... Julius Caesar OLIVIER Opened March 22 THEY'RE a dispirited bunch of conspirators in John Schlesinger's production of Julius Caesar at the Olivier, hardly one of them with the spunk to match his words. And, equally unusual for this play, it is Julius Caesar one remembers above all the others, principally because he is played in superbly confident style by John Gielgud, whereas most of the ...

... ROH Redevelopment. ON March 16 the Covent Garden Committee of the GLC approved the Royal Opera House's application for planning permission for Phases 1 (a) and (b). covering its westward extension across Mart Street to James Street to provide improved facilities backstage, including new dressing rooms and rehearsal areas. In addition, planning permission was given for internal alterations to ...

... GUILDFORD DESPITE a. few flashes of epigrammatic glitter, Sheridan today can be a bit of a bore-- especially when attenuated to a marathon three hours. This is the running time of at the Yvonne Arnaud, a splendidly stylish double disaster. It is an adaptation by Lionel Harris of a 202-year-old comic opera now set to a rather insip, immature Julian Slade score from his pre-Salad Days. So ...

... Design For Living' NOEL COWARD'S Gilda in Design for Living is no ordinary woman, it's true. But whether or not she's as consistently extraordinary as in Michael Meacham's recent production for RADA is another matter. Lisa Eichhorn's Gilda was remarkably unreal, speaking throughout at an astonishing rate of knots, in strained, often plummy tones which came to life only to occasional ...

... The Western Kirkby Cowboy' THE Everyman Company, at present on tour, deserves a medal for sustaining the itinerary alone which includes Liverpool, Chester and Lancaster, as well as ten Merseyside venues in just under three weeks. So when it also produces a rumbustious cowbov sinealong on a practically bare Students' Union refectory floor hallmarked with expected Every man excellence, ...