... BIOGS REPUBUSHED A series of short biographies, originally published in the mid- eighties, have been republished and, where necessary, updated under a Legends title by Pavillion Books (all at £4.99 paperback). If, like me, you find 60Opage biographies daunting, these are slim (around 200 pages) volumes which offer sufficient information for the average reader, and all, except, for some reason, ...

... Not Dodging the issue Compiled By Peter Hepple MUSIC I must confess that in reading jazz books and criticism for half a century I had never come across the name of Roger Pryor Dodge until Hot Jazz and Hot Dance (Oxford University Press, £19.99), a collection of essays and articles written over the years from 1929 Til imvi \^%i y j to 1958. Sometime in the twen- I ties Dodge was seized by ...

... High spirits lift the standards Dorking Jack and the Beanstalk Keith Harris and Orville open the first pantomime in the newly mod ernised, attractive Dorking Halls and right from the first lines by man and duck, the show takes off and is a great success. It has only a small cast but the spirit is good, with comedy leading the way. Ronne Coyles plays his 58th consecutive panto (some years he ...

... Superficial look at a superstar I HAVE always thought of Gary Glitter more as a long-running acting role than a real-life rock star. Possibly his alter ego, Paul Gadd (a.k.a. Paul Raven), now feels the same way. The self-styled Leader Of The Gang's final stage name was chosen late one boozy night in 197 1 by Gadd himself and an assorted bunch of aides and mates in the bar of a posh Mayfair ...

... Catch up on a few French lessons for theatre snobs IN THIS country we are inclined to be a bit snooty about the theatre. Even though most of us may not go to it very much, we somehow assume that our theatre is the best developed in the world, forgetting the contribution made to world theatre, not to mention opera and ballet, By rrance. The Theatre Industry in 19th Century France (Cambridge ...

... Yes, women do have a sense of humour ONE OF Macmillan's Women in Society series, Women and Laughter (£10.99) is obviously written from a feminist perspective and often gives the impression of having been devised to fit the construct. The problem is that its author, Frances Gray, Lecturer in Drama at the University of Sheffield, while demolishing satisfactorily the myth that women have no sense ...

... Practical advice from from Honest Ed ED MIRVISH is every American's dream come true. American? Surely Honest Ed is Canadian? Yes, he is, and proud of it, but he was born in Colonial Beach, Virginia, son of Russian Jewish immigrants who had gone to the States to make their fortune. They didn't but Fid did, in Toronto, to where his father had moved when Ed was nine to sell Masonic encyclopaedias ...

... End Threepenny Opera, co-founded Theatre Workshop, and only abandoned the theatre to become a prime mover in the folk music revival. He left school in Salford at the height of the Depression. Suspect as the son of a well-known left-wing union activist, himself a member of the Young Communist League, he found jobs hard to get and even harder to hold. So, along with YCL friends who had been ...

... THERE are those who profess to find reference books dull things indeed, but having spent the first three years of my working life involved with them I realise thp skill, dedication and constant decision-making that goes into their preparation. One first has to understand that they are intended for reference, not reading. They are there when you want them, and few people in the arts and ...

... Strict maverick COMPILED BY PETER HEPPLE Because he has played so many vividly physical characters on stage and a series of villains in films, Steven Berkoff presents a rather frightening image. But his autobiography Free Association (Faber and Faber, £15.99) is revealing in that, although he is not exactly a pussy cat, he has an extraordinarily sensitive side which comes out of both his ...

... 'Bum Actor' is ready good By Peter Hepple Michael Sheard subtitles his book Yes, Mr Bronson (Summersdale, 46 West Street, Chichester, West Sussex P019 1RP, £6.99) Memoirs of a Bum Actor. Not a term, one might think, that the young and earnest might take to. But one sees what he means. It is meant to refer to those who take acting life as it comes, like Sheard himself, who won an award at ...

... BRITS ON BROADWAY Elizabeth Sharland has hit on a neat idea with her theatrical guides, though I feel they would be more useful in pocket size rather than full-page hardback format. She has already tackled London, now she does New York in The British on Broadway (Barbican Press, £12.95). Her style is agreeably discursive but seems to go off at tangents in what is presumably an attempt to put ...