... Carlisle theatre to close ONE OF CARLISLE'S principal theatres, Stanwix Arts Theatre, is to close following the county coun cil's decision to reduce its budget by £22,000. Stanwix Arts Theatre is part of the Cumbria College of Art and Design, and is said to have successfully served both the community and the surround ing South West part of Scotland. But a few months ago the council decided ...

... Games, set and hatch! Sheffield's plans for touring venue get underway By FAY SWEET AFTER spending more than 20 years in the dark, Sheffield's Lyceum Theatre is scheduled for re-opening as a major touring venue. The £12 million project gets under way in March and is due for completion in 1991 when the city will celebrate with its largest ever arts festival to coincide with the World Student ...

... Feast at the round table MARJORIE BATES MURPHY is left satisfied by the LIVERPOOL Camelot THE FLEETING wisp of glory that was Camelot can be seen in all its measured brilliance, under the plume of director Ian Kcllgren, who has spared no pains to present the court of King Arthur. The lamenting, fey quality of the tale is skilfully woven and each thread (or player) responds to the ...

... Sticky Fingers KINGS HEAD CONCERNED WITH two extremes--squatters and admen Michael Ellis, who has written both words and music and did himself once work as a graphic artist, starts off with Tameka (Amanda Symonds) and Maxwell (Alan Cooke) returning to their squat after a night out to celebrate the first night of Maxwell's play at meir local nns v^enirc. More than a bit the worse for wear, ...

... PEPE MISSES HIS CHANCE TO HOOF IT By CHRIS HUGHES A FRANTIC last minute appeal over the air nearly made a six year old camel from Acton, West Lon don famous last week but unfor tunately the six footer could not make his stage debut at the Tricy cle in Kilburn on Monday be cause he is not fire-proofed. The saga started when the National Theatre of Brent asked Capital Radio to broadcast its ...

... NEW POST FOR PRATLEY A senior Arts Council executive made redundant last year after a jobs shake-up inside the funding body has found a new permanent post. David Pratley, the council's former regional director, has been appointed chief executive of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society, which runs the city's philharmonic orchestra. Pratley left the Arts Council last year after an internal ...

... King John's Jewel BIRMINGHAM DAVID POWNALL'S new play, directed by Bill Pryde at the Brum Studio, gives the impression of listening in at an impromtu meeting of the King and his Privy Council--King John, that is, in 1212. A young Welsh hostage, a Jewish money lender, an abbot with his atten dant monk, the King's chief steward and the king himself all meet in a field near Nottingham and begin a ...

... Equity stubs out tobacco fire EQUITY HAS extinguished hopes of a union-wide ban on members working in shows sponsored by tobacco companies. A blanket ban is the key objective of the new pcifoimm pressure group, Artists Against Smoking Sponsorship, bunched this month. But Equity's leadership, which re jected a previous call for the ban after the union's annual general meeting earner this year, ...

... Plouviez defends LTC and lashes Gubbay ANGRY EQUITY officials have defended London theatre's industrial court and slammed the'West West End producer who called the union snide and cynical. General secretary, Peter Plouviez, has hit back against harsh criticism levelled at the London Theatre Coun- cial and Equity during the row over the transfer of short-lived musical The Ratepayers' ...

... The One O'Clock World TRICYCLE THE ONE O'CLOCK World is a play of obvious interest to journalists, dealing as it does with the professional and personal activities of the team responsible for a lunchtime radio news programme. It would be instructive to discover whether it is of equal fascination to those who are not in our trade. because to a certain extent it is bound to confirm their ...

... It's My Party GREENWICH IT IS 1984 but we are harking back to the sixties in It's My Party by John Flanagan and Andrew McCuIloch, directed by Antonia Bird at Greenwich Theatre. People's lives, views and emotions are shown through the familiar device of a party, when drinks in plenty, squabbles and unexpected things bine to create atmosphere which is sloppy, tense and occasionally comic. ...

... Ghetto BERLIN THE FREIE Volksbuhne in Berlin has presented, with a widely resounding success, a new play by the Israeli dramatist Joshua Sobol. Entitled Ghetto and produced by Paul Zadek, it recalls events that actually happened in the Lithuanian town of Vilna in June 1942 under the German occupation. That city had, at the time, a fairly large Jewish population and the Ger mans, to save ...