... After 19 years Peter Hepple retires today as editor of The Stage And Television Today. Publisher Frank Comerford pays tribute to Peter and his contribution to the paper WHEN Peter Hepple joined The Stage's staff nearly 20 years ago as Editor he was already well known to readers as a regular reviewer of plays, music hall shows and cabarets. So his connection with the paper goes back some 40 ...

... Doug Elkins RIVERSIDE A MAN with a flabby half naked body walks to the centre of the performing space, drops the towel that conceals his lower body and exits. From this we understand that the last thing Doug Elkins and his team want us to do is to take them too seriously, or to think in terms of their dance as something overly precious. Indeed, what follows from the choreographer-dancer and ...

... Out Of This World CARDIFF IT WAS bold, even rash, idea to conceive a ballet based on the sketchy little-known proposal that Dylan Thomas and Igor Stravinsky should collaborate on an opera about the last man and woman left on earth. The Welsh poet was already hasten ing towards the inevitable finale of his self-destruct alcoholism, while it is unlikely the Russian composer had approached even ...

... In the worst possible taste ENO Die Fledermaus HOBBES observed that life is nasty, brutish and short. ENO's new production of Die Fledermaus is nasty, brutish and, seemingly, interminable, a gigantic kitsch box chocfull of cliches, business and bad taste. Richard Jones (producer) no doubt intends it that way. But style should surely illumine content. Johann Strauss masterpiece is about ...

... Inventing A New Colour EXETER PAUL Godfrey's play --set in Exeter in 1942 --has a simple strength. This is the time when bombs fell on the City, but this is not another blitz play --for destruction plays a background part to a story of personal relationships. Mother, father and son dream out loud about the present and the future as though the chance of a quick end was hardly a possibility ...

... Mediocre melodrama Greenwich The Innocents THIS dramatisation of Henry James's superb novella, uses the version by William Archibald, the efficiency of which is vitiated by this open unchanging set and the lighting (design, James Merineld, lighting, Mick Hughes). Both fail to adequately create the suggestiveness of this smokily aimospnenc late, an angles ana gum and repressed sexuality. ...

... Turandot GUILDFORD PROMOTION of Puccini's Turandot varies from 'now widely acclaimed operatic climax Nessun Dorma to a 'stirring musical spectacular for the Christmas holiday featuring Nessun Dorma, the world's most popular aria.' Marketing processes have certainly done much for grand opera even though Gary Lineker has not yet been auditioned! Nessun Dorma received much applause when ...

... SHAFTESBURY Phantom Of The Opera SOMEONE asked me the other day whether I thought this production of Phantom of the Opera, despite the fart that it predated Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, was being staged to cash in on the other's success. I had to admit that this was a strong possibility, perhaps inevitably, but having seen Ken Hill s version I can only advise people to sec both the ...

... The Country Wife/ Lady Windermere's Fan LILIAN BAYLIS THE Cambridge Theatre Company seems far happier with the sexual frankness of Wycherley than the bogus melodrama of Wilde in this ambitious double-bill. Actors parade in their antique underwear and dress each other on stage as both productions get under way Director Mike Alfreds is making such an obvious point about the trappings of high ...

... Agamemnon BRIDGE LANE ADVERTISED as a new translation (by Peter Meineck, Graham Mitchell, and the anagrammancally named Dirk Obink), Aeschylus' superb play is rendered here in a version lacking a unified style which halfway through degenerates into unsuccessful farce. Part of the problem is direction (Graham Mitchell and Peter Meineck the latter directing himself in a fussy performance ...

... Romeo And Juliet ROYALTY NORTHERN Ballet Theatre's Romeo and Juliet, choreography by the Italian Massimo Moricone and direction by Christopher Gable, is small in scale, and lets its drama unfold with a clear sense of tragedy progressing. It it does so in a way that discour ages heightened awareness of the nature of tragedy, and with some uncertainties over how to reconcile ballet's formalism ...

... MANCHESTER By DIANE MASSEY THE EMPHASIS was almost purely on music during Tony West's winter showcase at the Greater Manchester Police Club. An afternoon was devot ed to groups and show- bands highlights later. But the main cabaret spot in the evening also heavily featured vocalists. Fortunately the overall standard was high. First on was Lynn Dee, a middle of the road female vocalist tailor ...