... Mame NEW YORK THE REVIVAL of Mame, with Angela Lansbury re-creating her original role, has arrived at the Gershwin Theatre on Broadway. Mame is not one of the great musicals of all time, but it's certainly superior to most recent offerings. It has at least three hit songs, and in Angela Lansbury it has a star whose charm and charisma remain unsurpassed. Predictably she makes Mame a warm, ...

... A neat farcical comedy ARTS Engaged W.S. GILBERT'S 1877 farcical comedy Engaged has been given a neat, effective production, directed by Roland Oliver, at the Arts. Cheviot Hill is engaged to three women, or is he?; is he at the same time married to a Scots lass who lives near Gretna Green? The ensuing complications go along with potent quests for money and the iron clad use of women's ...

... Leaving a sense of unfulfilled possibilities BRIGHTON This is the Modern World A GIFT for colourful, descriptive dialogue is Steve Devereaux' main asset in his one-acter This is the Modern World at Brighton's Marlborough Hotel. Not that the play itself is devoid of ideas; it has plenty, ranging from Oedipal symbolism to associations with The Who's Tommy and Quadrophenia. The ...

... Dream Play COCKPIT YOU ARE LED into the dark auditorium by a sleepwalker with a candle. And immediately you go to sleep. Because for over an hour you are battered by dream images. Karina Micallef has skilfully turned Ingmar Bergman's variation on Strindberg's Dream Play to her own cunning device. Incredible as it may seem the characters in the play have more depth at a moment's meeting than ...

... Launching attack at men CAFE STUDIO THEATRE A Pot of Basil WOMEN'S RIGHTS are Sarah Shipton's preoccupations (as writer and director) in two one-act plays by Subtext Inc. at the Cafe Studio Theatre. The arguments are familiar but they were not presented here with sufficiently strong thrust to make them live on beyond the mass. A Pot of Basil pointed the finger at men who use women for ...

... Variations on I'm Old Fashioned/ Ballet d'lsolde NEW YORK JEROME Robbins has returned to more conventional dancing and shown how Astaire can be successfully honoured by a classical ballet company. Robbins long-awaited Astaire ballet is called Variations on I'm Old Fashioned and is just that. I'm Old Fashioned is the Jerome Kern song danced by Astaire and Rita Hayworth in the 1942 movie ...

... Delicious ROYAL BALLET Varii Capricci HOW EXTRAORDINARY, here we have the greatest British choreographer at an age when with each new ballet it seems that he will put his creative foot down and announce no more, coming up with a delicious trifle of wit and, most surprising of all for Frederick Ashton, unashamed vulgarity. Varu Capncci aroused applause immediately the curtain went up at the ...

... Filumena WORTHING BETH ELLIS' portrayal of the central character in the Connaught Theatre's production of Eduardo De Filippo's Filumena is so exquisitely fashioned as to suggest that Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall might have adapted the work of the Neapolitan playwright as a vehicle for this accomplished actress. To claim that she stands head and shoulders above anyone else in Mark ...

... Limbs and grimaces? THE PLACE John Mowat DOES MIME, stepchild of the performing arts, have to have a concept --or ought it be sufficient to merely watch and admire its jumbled bravura of limbs and grimaces? John Mowat s petormance provokes basic questions. He is probably the most talented mime-artist I have ever seen as far as classical mime goes (timing, wit and imagination included) but ...

... Fairy story ENO Rusalka GRATITUDE IS due to the English National Opera for putting on Dvorak's rarely-heard Rusalka at the Coliseum, and giving us an opportunity of hearing some of his most enchanting and luscious music. It may at times be more symphonic than operative, and it may lack the essential variety and contrast that make tor dramatic emphasis, but it does clothe the simple fairy ...

... Parsifal WNO THE WNO decision to stage and tour Wagner's daunting six-hour Parsifal was a courageous one indeed. For good reason, this operatic masterpiece had not been presented in Britain outside of London for more than half a century. At times during the two-year preparation it must have caused some heartsearching nightmares, first losing its German producer Rudolf Noelte through a ...

... Pre-pollution Rhine maidens WNO The Rhinegold WITH CONFIDENCE the Welsh National Opera have launched into Wagner's awesome The Ring Of The Nibelung. The epic cycle is to be staged over the next two years, and to judge Irom the production team's achievements in the The Rhinegold, which sets the scene for this tale of love and lust for power, there is much to look forward to. Not that ...