... 'The Rebel Kinsman' I have serious reservations that the Belgrade's TIE house production this year is suitable for its intended audience of seven to eleven year old children. The production is a new play by Ron Rose called The Rebel Kinsman and is set in the time of the English Civil Wars. It is a play characterised by a marked didactic intent to get over the Orwellian message that all ...

... 'The Overbury Scandal' THE OVERBURY case is one of the most fascinating of 17th century stories, a phantasmagoria of court intrigue, sexual passion, dubious medicine and downright sorcery. For City Lit students, George Pensotti has devised a play within a play--The Overbury Scandal is supposed to have been written by Francis Bacon for production by his own theatre company, the Lord Cham ...

... The Journalists COVENTRY ARNOLD WESKER'S The Journalists was given its world premiere in Coventry recently by one of the city's amateur theatre companies in its own Criterion Theatre. The play concerns the production of an issue of The Sunday Paper and is set amidst the structured disorder of a newspaper office. The issue appears to be in jeopardy because of the threat of industrial ...

... 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, ...

... Early Shakespeare and the Late Marlowe' EARLY Shakespeare and the Late Marlowe is a swift and imaginative piece of drama which appeals to its audience in a very direct way. Author Michael Moriarty. a Questors member for some six years, displays an acute sense of humour in this, his first play. The young and naive William Shakespeare is married to Ann Hathaway but enjoys a handy fling with ...

... 'WOE. BABYLON' I SUPPOSE if you can make a ballet or two out of the Book of Job, to make a rock opera out of the Lamentations of Jeremiah is not all that problematical. In any case, that is what Jim Cuomo, Michael Hanks and Sandy Spencer have done at the Round House Downstairs; they call it woe! Babylon set it in modern New York but with the air of a traditional morality wrapped around it ...

... TIPPITY. FLIP-FLOP, GUM0R0PS AND BOOTS' THE NEW home-grown children's show at the Woolwich Tramshed is a creation of the same team who devised the successful and excellent Christmas one-- John Cooper and Stephen Wyatt with musical direction by Joe Griffiths. This Easter attraction has the somewhat bersome title of Tippity, Flip-Flop, Gumdrops and Boots they are all dolls made by a skilled ...

... Living Quarters DUBLIN IN HIS new play Living Quarters, Brian Friel takes the well-worn premise that character is fate and tests it exhaustively. The characters in question are members of an army family living in a remote area of Donegal. They are introduced by Clive Geraghty, the mysterious Sir, who has their past and future recorded in a ledger ne carries with him. Under his direction ...

... The Last Missionary BRISTOL THE reverend gentleman in John Patrick Vincent's new play The Last Missionary, premiered by the Bristol Old Vic in its New Vic Studio, ends like many of his jungle precursors served up cannibal-style on a salver. But. sadly, he is the main dish at a meal that carries as little impact as the badly -written, over verbose play itself, despite the attempt to draw some ...