... The Hunchback Of Notre Dame YOUNG VIC FIRST SEEN at the Cottesloe Natio nal Theatre, Ken Hill's version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame has come to the Young Vic, packed with vigour, invention, horrors, and fascinating fun. It is staged in an ingenious setting by Marty Flood, and some of the characters welcome members of the audience on their arrival in the theatre. There is an air of ...

... Five Premieres ZURICH FIVE WORLD premieres within days of each other are quite a record for Zurich. Most important was Duerren- matt's The Breakdown, which be gan a tour in Germany and came to the Swiss city of Winterthur before surfacing at the Schauspielhaus. Herr Traps, a commercial traveller whose car breaks down, is dined and wined by a judge and a threesome of former lawyers who get ...

... The Stadium EDINBURGH NEVER WRITE your epic first. That was the advice given by an Edinburgh theatre manager to aspiring playwrights. Alisdair Skinner, who wrote The Stadium cannot have met him His play, at the Traverse Theatre Club, is profound, vague and standard. His characters are a football fan named Sandy and a cricket fan named Clark, who meet outside the closed gates of a stadium. ...

... The Prime Slot Front Cloth OLD RED LION A NEW PUB theatre is a welcome event, but when the opening attrac tion is billed as a contemporary minstrel show, it is perhaps taking on more than a non-first night audience will accept. This revue is composed (visually and aurally) by Robert Longdon. choreographed by Linda Dobell and directed by Charlie Hanson. The mood is set by the Noddy at 40 sketch ...

... The Adventures Of Tom Thumb UNICORN WITH LESS children's theatre in central London this Christmas than probably at any time in the past 35 years, those Unicorh performances open to public booking are already selling well. wneiner parents ana ennaren win be pleased with their entertainment purchase remains to be seen, for there is an icy air of social realism about Henry Livings' script and the ...

... We Know Who We Are OVAL HOUSE IT HAS BECOME something of a tradition that the complete team of workers at this arts centre combine with their local students to present at Christmas an original. Gothick play, emphasising the visual as well as the poetic side of the genre. This year's anarchy fantasy is vaguely 18th century, but it is the century of Sade and Calas, of the September massacres ...

... SALLY CRADDOCK, until recently press officer at the Egyptian Embassy, has been appointed publicity officer for the Unicorn Theatre for Children. ...

... BALLET PREMIERE IN 1980. the centenary year of Jac ques Offenbach's death. Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet will present the British premiere of Papillon to the only full-length ballet score written by Offenbach. Choreographed by Ronald Hynd and designfd by Peter Docherty this new two-act ballet will have its British premiere at the Grand Thea tre, Leeds on February 7. 1980, with its first London ...

... Heroes at New End PETER HEPPLE REVIEWS THERE COULD be no better epitaph for the seventies than Doug Lucie's Heroes, in which two generations of Oxford students, separated by ten years, are seen in the same room. The 1969 set can be roughly divided into revolutionaries and hippies; in 1979 it is more a case of the cares ana uon t cares Essentially, of course, they are the same people, ...

... Rich And Rich NOTTINGHAM EVERYBODY IS extremely sincere in Rich And Rich--Bertolt Brecht who started it in the early thirties, the Nottingham Playhouse which now gives it its British premiere, and most of all the racial fanatic Angelas who splits the country into the favoured Krytes and the scapegoat Krinks. But, like David Collls' set which cleverly suggests a hastily nailed soap box, ...

... The Wart 20th CENTURY COYOTE SOON THE world will be divided into those who missed The Wart' md those who didn't bother to go at all. boasts the publicity handout for fringe group 20th Century Coyote. \V hich will be a great pitv it that were so as this bunch of ex- uni\ersitv drama students certainly offer some genuinely comic mo ments with an hour's worth of satirical revue material which is ...

... She Stoops To Conquer GREENWICH GOLDSMITH IS given stylish appreciation in Patrick Mason's production, a Dublin director for an expatriate Irishman's comedy of English manners. John Pascoe's set is deceptively simple, for an octagonal floor-cloth of boards is backed t>y nothing ex cept a huge Stubbs-like painting of two horses frolicking in a park landscape, subtly lit by John A. Williams to ...