... Says I, Says He THEATRE UPSTAIRS IT IS unreasonable to expect every Irishman to have the gift of the gab. Obviously quite a number of them must occasionally, at least, descend to lyricism on the level of: Come away, my love, with me, to the station lavatory. Equally, it is patently absurd to expect them all to give expression to their sense of the con trary in terms as deft and refined as ...

... DECENT THINGS BRIGHTON ACTORS' WORKSHOP has a cosy venue for its lunchtime theatre performances; a large first- floor room in the Marlborough pub just across the main road from the Royal Pavilion. It has been in operation there for several months, giving work to professionals in the area and receiving financial help from the South East Arts Association. Latest production is Richard Crane's ...

... THE BRIDE AND THE BUTTERFLY HUNTER PAINIINob based on plays, poems and novels abound; I wonder if Nisim Aloni's The Bride and the Butterfly Hunter is the first example of a play based on a picture. In this case, it is Yosl Bergner's surrealist painting which has spawned the Israeli play directed by Raphael Nathan at the Theatre at New End. Moshe Mussman has decorated it prettily with a ...

... THE PHILANTHROPIST THE Philanthropist by Christopher Hampton was given an admirable performance by Central School Students recently. It was expertly directed by John Jones and designed by David Lewis, both with an eye for detail. And it is the detail of the play that delights the audience. The philanthropical philologist Philip, no accident of language, loses his fiancee after a dinner ...

... THE LIFE AND DEATH OF ALMOST EVERYBODY THE Life and Death of Almost Everybody by David Campton is a peculiar choice of play for a drama school, but Webber Douglas Academy chose it for their students. It gave little opportunity to most of the performers with only two effective characters in it. One is a sweeper in a theatre who finding himself with an audience, decides to play creator and ...

... Joking Apart SCARBOROUGH A NEW YEAR nas traditionally become the premiere time for a new play by Alan Ayckbourn. And this year is no exception for he has penned another work which, after a highly enthusiastic reception at its opening night at Scarborough's Westwood Theatre, where it had its world premiere, is expected to go into the West End at a later date. Spanning a period of 12 years ...

... The Sleeping Prince GUILDFORD VAL MAY has felt for some time that a major revival of The Sleeping Prince was overdue. He now directs a new production of this Ruritanian romance by Terence Rattigan at the Yvonne Arnaud. Despite such special pleading, however, it seems unlikely that this amiable fairy story will survive in theatrical history. For it is no mere coincidence that the play was ...

... 'KINGDOM COMING' AT THE KING'S HEAD Douglas Blake reviews Opened January 17 JUST IMAGINE the problems of Northern Ireland placed in a fictitious Caribbean island, and you have some idea of what Kingdom Come at the King's Head is about. What is surprising with such a basically serious subject is that Stewart Parker's book is enlivened by the jolly and often rather good music of Shaun Davey so ...

... EDEN PREJUDICE is a tuber capable of late-flowering buds. We all know about black-white, Protestant- Catholic. Arab-Jew confrontation leading to conflict; how many, of whatever variation recognise the split within any one of those embattled positions? Steve Carter won two major American drama awards in 1976 for Eden and the current Keskidee Centre production by Rufus Collins shows us why. ...

... THE HOSTAGE CLIVE WEBSTER'S production of Behan's The Hostage with predominantly postgraduate students at the Mountview Theatre School takes full advantage of the remarkable musicality displayed by this particular crop. I am not sure whether Joan Littlewood would approve ot euner tne larding with bits of Oh What a Lovely War or indeed of the ferocious breakdown of the original plot ...

... WHAT THE BUTLER SAW MAURICE STEWART'S production for RADA of Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw made of the play a gloriously updated Feydeau farce, with the mistaken identities, cross purposes, double takes, despairing gestures, and burstings-in on incriminating scenes getting faster aiiu lunouser until me wnole thing got completely out of hand with pistols going off left right and centre. ...

... New control from Thorn-- Scene Setters J A NEW lighting control called Scene Setters will be the highlight of an exhibition to be staged next week by the Theatre Lighting divi sion of Thorn Lighting The exhibition takes place at Thorn House, Upper St Martin's Lane, London from January 30 Febru ary 3 inclusive. The new control combines the compactness and versatility of the QT 120 with the 240 ...