... Mass investment for musical tour MASS CARIB, the West Indian musical which first premiered at the Albany Empire, starts a ten week tour this week backed by a bumper £200,000 investment from the Arts Council. The money marks a rare foray by the funding body into drama production and will account for a sizeable one tenth of this year's touring budget. Arts Council spokesman Jack Phipps said the ...

... Henry VI Part Two OLD VIC NOT EVEN Michael Bogdanov's char acteristically inventive and often bril liantly audacious direction can rescue much of this pedestrian text which bears little imprint of Shakespeare himself but much of his uninspired collaborators. This play flares into life whenever the director's touch is vivid. The Jack Cade scenes show Michael Pennington in superb form and this ...

... Their price is right PETER HEPPLE on a play that realises its market value HAMPSTEAD Valued Friends STEPHEN JEFFREYS has the distinction of writing, in Valued Friends, the first play about property values in unpolitical terms, an examination of how people get on the property roundabout and turn into the archetypal yuppie. Though largely a comedy, it makes some serious points, about the ...

... Miller, Miller on the ball YOUNGVIC Two Way Mirror EVEN this late in his writing career, Arthur Miller shows that he is still capable of making a better play than most authors half his age. Not for him the repetition of familiar themes but the finding of new ones concerned with the quality of human relationships, plays in fleetingly glimpsed but then cast aside, sometimes in favour of ...

... The Battle Of Cable Street ELEPHANT THEATRE A NEW play by novcllist Simon Blumenfield, The Battle Of Cable Street-premiered at last year's Edinburgh Fringe-is a tense and vivid evocation of the most famous antifascist demonstration Britain has ever seen. Blumenfeld, who was one of the most successful of the wave of militant Jewish/left wing writers to emerge from London's pre-war East End, has ...

... Rosemary Butcher ICA ALMOST two years ago Rosemary Butcher Dance Company presented Touch the Earth at the Whitechapel An Gallery, when the inter-action of choreography, music, design-and artistic interpretation-transcended everyday experience. I mention it because Butcher's newest work, After the Crying and the Shouting, scheduled to tour, does not scale such heights, though again the ...

... John and Ian take over TWO OF London's most innova tive small scale theatres, the Almeida and the Half Moon, have appointed new artistic directors to handle their forthcoming prog rammes. Actor/director Ian McDiarmid takes over at the Almeida in August, succeed ing Pierre Audi, who helped found the theatre and leaves for a post in the Netherlands. McDiarmid has previous ly been employed as ...

... 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, ...

... Transitions Dance Company THE PLACE TRANSITIONS Dance Company is run by the La ban Centre for students on the advanced performing course. The name hints at its aims, which are to help with the transference between study and professionalism, and therefore audiences will not expect the height of sophistication and polish. But being the Laban Centre of course, nothing stands still, and each year ...