... Player Piano ALMOST FREE PLAYER PIANO reaches us at a number of removes. James Saunders' dramatisation is based on the seminal America novel by Kurt Vonnegut and shows distinct traces of both sides of an awkwardly theatrical coin--either too much or too little time and hard labour has been? expended. A dramatised reading y?s. A radio play possibly. A live (and lively) theatrical experience- ...

... 'EVITA' AT THE PRINCE EDWARD Peter Hepple reviews Opened June 21 FOR a show to be publicised as loudly and as long as Evita has been is one thing. For that show to live up to the publicity is another. But the new Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice musical rises magnificently to the occasion, and could well be a landmark in the entire? history of the genre. To begin with, Evita is an entity. ...

... AMERICAN MARGINS SOME time ago, the Richmond Fringe slipped a one-act play by a--to its audience--totally unknown American author into a triple bill and scored a bull's eye. The script had come from the University of South Western Louisiana where there flourishes something called the? Louisiana Playwrights' Theater. This consists of teaching staff from many disciplines to write, produce and ...

... VERA'S LAST STAND SHIRK lunchtime theatre at the Pindar of Wakefield pub in King's Cross may well have solved its most pressing problem with the landlord and licensee but seems in the meantime to have landed two fresh ones. The first is common to many intermittent theatres and companies the time it takes to rebuild audiences once these have been lost or otherwise turned away. The second is one ...

... GUMBA GUMBA AS A sort of curtain-raiser to the evening show, a reading of the Biko inquest proceedings, Richmond Fringe's current lunchtime offering is a compilation of personal ex perience acted by Moira Downie and John Challis, directed by Jeremy Paul and written by these with John Matshikiza. Gumba Gumba shows us some South African residents and visitors. Black and White and relates this ...

... FRIENDS INTO the spanking new Bellerby lunchtime theatre in Guildford has come another of Fay Weldon's ex plorations of the feminine condition. This one, directed by Kevin Robin son, is called Friends and treats on-stage three ladies of physical if not emotional or mental maturity who meet on an old school pals' reunion. Off-stage is Patrick, who has had (or more accurately been had by) all ...

... STAGE DIRECTIONS THERE IS theatrical truth as well as a gorgeous in-joke secreted way way down in Stage Directions. Rich mond Fringe gave the British pre miere of this short play by Israel Horowitz as a summer lunchtime production and Sam Walters cast it from three players who were ideally suited to their material. There is no dialogue as such; the story unfolds through literal stage ...

... The Futurist Marvellous MOVING BEING MOVING BEING chose to enter its second decade as a professional fringe company with a colourful, f surreal entertainment entitled The Futurist Marvellous, presented at Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, their base since it opened seven years ago. It is in a sense a beginning and an end. for after 10 years director Geoff Moore and designer Peter Mumford, ...

... MR DIRECTOR RICHMOND FRINGE, grousing about its minuscle grant from its wealthy parent borough with good reason, has commissioned a play from Fay Weldon for its final evening presentation of the 1977/78 season. Mr Director examines the case of a 14-year old girl at an approved school she has had a couple of abortions after the council took her into care and turned down her mother's ...

... TWO CAN PLAY AT THAT GAME BARRY L. Hillman's Two Can Play At That Game, premiered by the Whitehills Players in Northampton recently, set out from an old and familiar starting place. Malcolm Rivers, trainee supervisor, has won the pools. And doesn't a man with £620,000 need a wife? Debra Renny arrives at his door with a proposal of marriage and two teenage children to bless their union in ...

... THE HURLER THE Gaelic Athletic Association, with its bigoted approach to Irish Nationalism, its violent interpretation of competitiveness in sport, its tacit approval of the militant aspect of Irish unity--all have contributed in no small way to the present troubles in the North of Ireland. that is the proposition put for ward by Cork journalist Val Dorgan in his first play, The Hurler, ...

... RAT SHIRK, having weathered a trial lunchtime season at the Pindar of Wakefield, is embarked on Seven Modern Sins. Now, you can think what you like about the medieval catalogue of such misdemeanours but at least you must admit that they came up colourful. Cardinal faults of our century come up grey. Clive Walker's Rat exemplifies Waste. Conspicuous waste used to be the charge but here it ...