... THEATRE OF COINCIDENCE PERFORMANCE art is a theatrical category which has earned itself a bad name If Theatre of Coincidence at Oval House is anything to go by, the blame is appropriate and necessary I don't remember when I last suffered anything as inept, trivial and totally amateurish (in the most pejorative sense of the word) as Incident One: A Crowded Time. This is the sort of nonsense ...

... TO DIE AMONG FRIENDS UNDOGMATIC, politically uncommitted new theatre companies do not precisely cluster in the realm of The Other Theatre. Witch formed itself fairly casually in February and showcased its first production at the end of April, although the first London area dates booked already stretch through June. Lunchtime presentations are also under con sideration. To Die Among Friends ...

... 23rd National Student Drama Festival COLLEGE THEATRE/CLIVE WOLFE IN VIEW of the growing list ot companies giving donations to the 23rd National Student Drama Festival, of which Granada. Thames and Anglia TV are the latest, it is entirely appropriate that contemporary concern is one of the keynotes of this year's 16 finalists in Durham (March 28 to April 2). Concern about the aftermath of a ...

... An Inspector Calls SHAW Opened January 16 BUILT LIKE a well-engineered detective story, the plot of J B Priestley's An Inspector Calls holds together this somewhat mystical moral tale and makes it all seem credible. Memories of the Old Vic production of 30 years ago, with its starry cast headed by Ralph Richardson, make the present com pany at the Shaw a trifle underpow ered, though James ...

... Cabaret MONTROUS REGIMENT MONSTROUS REGIMENT-- militant but nice with it, is a company of nine sisters plus two men thrown in for equality, committed to improving the status of women. In Floorshow, directed by David Bradford at Stratford East recently, it left no male dominated stone un turned, but projected anxious messages of grim protest with such humorous candour, and tongue in ...

... SPELLBOUND ADULT illiteracy is a problem in this country recently and deservedly given publicity and incurring sympathy through a controlled period of emphasis in the media. To the best of my knowledge, however, only one of those theatre groups usually set together under the adjective miueo nas lacKiea me issue in dramatic form. This is Common Stock with Spellbound. Alan Passes' script is ...

... Still With Us The Big Bands IF BIG BANDS were really dead, as many people seem lo accept, there would not be so many tangible reminders of their existence. There would be none of those continual nostalgic harkbacks to the thirties and forties, in the theatre and on radio and TV. Record companies would not be re-releasing masters made by everyone from JACK PAYNE and the BBC RADIO DANCE BANO ...

... VOICE CHANGE AFTER 14 years there has been a change in the voices of Sounds Bob Rogers. Drummer and fourth voice Len Clarke was offered the drum job with Evita and decided that it was time he branched out having spent most of his pro career with the one band. Finding a replacement wasn't easy because sight reading vocal parts is an art in itself coupled with playing drums limited to choice ...

... UNIQUE Drummer PETER DA VIS, seen here with his guitarist Chris West (formerly with Stomu Yamash'ta), leads the unique jazz group Sister Sun, which draws its in spiration from Sun Ra and Tony Williams' Lifetime. Most of the band's success to date has been on the Con tinent and they have appeared at jazz festi vals in Paris and Bonn. Saxes and flute player Doni Stewart and bassist Mark Smith ...

... MELLY When he launched himself into the jazz world over 30 years ago, following a public school education at Stowe and National Service in the Royal Navy, which he has chronicled so hilariously in Rum. Bum and Concertina, now among the DaDerback best-sellers, GEORGE MELLY probably never dreamed that in the late seventies he would not only be one of the biggest box office attractions in this ...

... The Sleeping Beauty ROYAL BALLET I DOUBT whether there's any dancer in the Royal Ballet with a more assured balance than Jennifer Penney, who seems to be able to go up on point in arabesque or attitude and stay there motionless until she chooses to come down. It's a valuable asset, of course, but watching her Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty at Covent Garden on March 10. I was conscious of ...

... A Mackintosh Experience EDINBURGH THE MOST INFORMATIVE and attractive feature of A Mackintosh Experience is undoubtedly the setting. That is, if one is allowed to call the illuminated screen pictures of garden produce and flowers, of shapes and the reduction or distillation of shapes, part of the setting. At the Lyceum Little Theatre, Edinburgh, this educative tribute to an architect, whose ...