... Dames at Sea KINGSTON DAMES AT SEA is the eleventh production by Kingston Overground theatre in a most successful first year at its new theatre in Ashdown Road, and the 80th since it first opened in the town in June 1974. Nearly 3,000 new members joined in 1977 and artistic director Alan Bryce is now looking ahead to a permanent home in Kingston before the mid- 1980s. In Dames at Sea ...

... The Point MERMAID Opened December 27 EVEN if one is not quite certain what they are, a number of changes have taken place in Harry Nilsson's The Point since the original production last Christmas, and not, one fears, necessarily for the better. It is perhaps a slicker, funnier show, with all technical systems at go, these being extremely elaborate and em ploying film and slide ...

... CANDIDA AS A wife fed on the diet of her husband's metaphors and preaching, Bernard Shaw's Candida needs an amount of serenity and maturity in performance. Ana Lorneua McMinn in David Perry's production for RADA pro vided both in an intelligent perform ance. In the Rev James Morell, the busband for whom so much is and has been sacrificed, a hollow laugh and empty bonhomie are not ...

... PRETTY UGLY WE ARE what the media makes us. It's not a new theme in young people's theatre these days, as fringe companies rush to capture the heretofore neglected 13 to 17 age range. Fashions in pop music, in clothes, in food and drink rush at the young consumer in a kaleidoscope of change with one aim the jingle of the cash till. Pretty Ugly has been devised by the Women's Theatre Group ...

... SOON MAYBE BOOGIE INCUBUS have joined the theatre groups making capital out of neo- fascism. Their current show is a musical Soon Maybe Boogie about two generations of Brownshirts, Blackshirts or whatever the colour may be it has what I presume to be highly significant lyrics, but that's pretty useless if you cannot catch more than the occasional word be cause of the amplification past my ...

... YOUR PLACE OR MINE? ROYCE RYTON's latest piece Your Place or Mine? playing at Kingston Overground is a fun play, pure and simple. It is a two-hander with boy meeting girl at a party and girl re plying Yours to the question in the title. Back at the flat, he wants to get on with the agenda but she is a good girl from Surbiton with religious scruples and prays on her knees to prove it. This ...

... VOICES PACKED houses seem to have greeted all the theatre events in the Women's Festival '77 at Action Space. Certainly there was a large, attentive and responsive audience for the British premiere of Voices by Susan Griffin; it won an Emmy TV award in the States and has been staged, broadcast and televised there. As directed by Kate Crutchley, the five women sit scat tered amid the ...

... 'THE GINGERBREAD MAN' AT THE OLD VIC Anne Morley-Priestman reviews IF David Wood seems to be cornering this year's market in original musical plays for children, it is. on the strength of the Cambridge Theatre Company production at the Old Vic of The Gingerbread Man. a well deserved monopoly. Quality counts in this area of theatre siuiy even mure man eisewnere and it's a prime baking. The ...

... The Coming of the Twilight Circus OVAL HOUSE OVAL HOUSE'S Christmas offering is an in-house affair and a gorgeous bit of chilling hokum. The Coming of the Twilight Circus is another exercise in proving that anything Hammer and Amicus could do. fringe theatre can do (if not better), just as well--or as nastily. The Coming of the Twilight Circus is derivative in many ways but it has been ...

... Charley's Aunt YOUNG VIC Opened December 22 CHARLEY'S AUNT is the most endurable of farces and works well even in the Young Vic's open staging, with the audience aisles providing extra entrances and exits. icuu> ort-rn is ims years Lora Fancourt Babberley; tall, a reluctant Aunt. but once stuck with the part, finding much to relish in the impersonation. This outrageous and highly ...

... PETER PAN AND EMILY C. P. TAYLOR matches the middle class gentility of the Peter Pan story with the cheerful working class iconoclasm of Newcastle in a festive season entertainment entitled Peter Pan and Emily. Not Wendy you understand but a different person and a differing personality named Emily, a Geordie lass. The production at the Traverse Theatre Club, Edinburgh by the Live Theatre ...

... PIONEERS MICHAEL Wilcox's Pioneers, which had its world premiere at Dovecot Arts Theatre, Stockton recently poses many technical problems for the director with its cast of 23 and flashback scenes in sound to the pioneer days of Canada. The first night performance went very well and the authenticity of the Canadian scenes was something to marvel at. As Michael Wilcox comes from Essex and ...