... THE POLKA Children's Theatre could be forced to close down for three months a year or increase its ticket prices by 40 per cent if suffers any more cash cut-backs. Fears arc growing thai the theatre will lose around £36,750 in grants if the GLC is eventually abolished. And that could force a review into the way the theatre is run and the services it offers. Stephen Midlane, the theatre's ...

... An Inspector Calls GREENWICH AN INSPECTOR Calls, one of J. B. Priestley's very best plays, is being given an impressive revival at Greenwich Theatre. Into the story of the birling family, prosperous, new middle-class in the Yorkshire of 1912, comes biting com ment on matters in relation to master and employee, and a sounding of moral, intellectual and social consid erations which reveals a ...

... Turning Over BUSH WHEN THERE are life and story interest, there is always pleasure to be gained from a play of sharp, close observation about a particular kind of activity. This is the case with Brian Thompson's Turning Over, at the Bush. The author focuses on the technical, mechanical and personal variations in the dance, or pantomime, during the filming of a television documentary by ...

... Slap-on line--delivery CRITERION Run For Your Wife! WE'VE SEEN all the stereotypes before: the bigamist, the gay neighbour, the distraught and double-crossed wife; the farcical situations are basic: mistaken identities, slapstick comedy, confused schedules and even the same double-purpose set for simultaneous actions in different households the list is infinitesimal, but Ray Cooney's ...

... SHAW The Ballad Of Billy Lane THE BALLAD of Billy Lane, a musical about an Englishman who, settled in Australia in the 1890s, decided to build a socialist Utopia in Paraguay, is the first full scale production at the Shaw since control of the theatre was taken over by the Borough of Camden and the National Youth Theatre was asked to vacate the premises. It is a dismal start for the borough ...

... A chess set production BIRMINGHAM Traitors THE THIRD of the new plays commissioned for the Birmingham Theatre Festival, Stephen Douglas' Traitors, ranges to an exploration of philosophical ideas about the subtle erosion of democracy under a strong leader, and the difficulties which lie in the practical interpretation of the allegory, render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and ...

... BIRMINGHAM Fallacies JACKI HOLBOROUGH'S own experience of working with a women's touring theatre company seems to have served her well in the creation of her new play, Fallacies, commissioned by the Triangle's Studio Company for the Birmingham Theatre Festival. it depicts tne cnanging lortunes oi an under-funded, hard-pressed feminist touring company, Toxic Shock, for which Jacki ...

... NEW YORK Children AMERICAN Kaleidoscope's revival of Children reveals it as one of the most perceptive and Chckhovian studies of the decline of American upper-class, or 'WASP', values. Admirably directed by Norris Houghton, a veteran of off-Broadway and commercial theatre, it has an un usually strong cast for an off-Broad way production. Elizabeth Lawrence makes the mother who nearly breaks ...

... A casual prince MANCHESTER Hamlet A STAGE completely devoid of scenery, the minimum of props, and the actors wearing the casual clothes of today and sitting around the edge of the auditorium when they are not actually on-stage. These are some of the features of Braham Murray's new production of Hamlet by Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre Company. In a note, printed at the back of the ...

... A burning issue CARDIFF House To House A BURNING issue in Wales has been the deliberate setting fire to holiday cottages by a few extremist nationalists who claim that these second homes, owned by 'foreigners', help force up property prices and thus contribute to the depopulation of Welsh villages. The burning of one such cottage, in which the occupant is incinerated and the arsonist ...

... She Stoops To Conquer LEATHERHEAD FIRST THING to look for in yet another production of She Stoops To Conquer is something different. At Thorndike this was immediately apparent when Hastings appeared in a modern dinner jacket to deliver the Prologue, especially written by Joan Macalpme. Like all good prologues, it set the mood with references to the theatre by the silver Mole and the sub ...

... Jamie the Saxt EDINBURGH SCOTTISH HISTORY has always provided a rich source of characters and stories for playwrights to draw on. And in Jamie the Saxt, Robert McLcllan picked one of the most colourful periods--that of the late 16th century, when powerful landlords and the church had both the ambition and means to take over tne throne. The threatened King in question is James the Sixth ...