... A Bombay mix of tragedy and humour BY MOIRA PETTY Sights and smells of Bombay wafted through the radio in a vivid and entertaining Saturday Playhouse production based on Meira Chand's novel House of the Sun (BBC Pebble Mill for R4, Saturday, September 14). The focus was on a Bombay apartment block, home to Hindu refugees from Pakistan, whose lives were detailed with enormous humanity. This ...

... An evening of Christopher Bruce SADLER'S WELLS FOR A LONG time Christopher Bruce has been one of our most consistently interesting choreographers, and though he works with companies at home (including London Festival Ballet) and abroad, his name will always have links with Ballet Rambert. He trained at the old Rambert school, joined the company in its classical era, crossing over to its ...

... Jurassic Parker is a right pain in the mutt By MORIA PETTY EXCUSE My Dust (R4; Wednesday, August 18) presented two views of Dorothy Parker in action, each of them equally unattractive. She was either engaged,-- cocktail in hand, in the maelstrom of a tinny, Scott Fitzgerald-like social whirl practising her Desi-Knuwn apnonsms on the party-goers who greet ed her one-liners with unconvincing ...

... A nod's as good as a wink when you're on the radio By MOIRA PETTY THERE is refinement of face and bearing about Bill Nighy which, in a visual medium, might not have found him cast as a coarse Irish small-time villain with a compulsion about his bodily functions. As Sean Bourke, the criminal who unexpectedly found fame when he sprung George Blake from prison, he was magnificently pitted against ...

... Putting the PC in police constable By MOIRA PETTY WHEN drama becomes subverted to a cause or an issue it's easy to end up seeing everything as black or white. In the play about the police and racism, Saturday Night Theatre- The Right Result (R4; Sat July 17) a white commuter was being questioned after a black youth was killed, apparently in the course of a mugging. Coffee black or white? he ...

... CECIL Madden. Assistant to the Controller of Television Programmes, will once again be in charge of the BBC's Television Celebrity Dais at this year's Radio Show from August 27 to September 6. I.ast year, in response to his invitations, over 250 celebrities of TV, stage, lilnts and radio appeared in person to meet the public. This year invitations to appear on the Celebrity Dais will be ...

... Happy with Beckett BY MOIRA PETTY The pareckiown sense of reality that is the essence of Samuel Beckett's Happy Days (Catherine Bailey Ltd for R3, Sunday, March 31) was wonderfully captured by Geraldine McEwan. She was Winnie, who begins the play up to her waist in sand and ends it nearly submerged, but whose commentary, a near-monologue, continues unabated. McEwan's thin, hard but ...

... Losing the way with characters a few tabs short of a full trip BY MOIRA PETTY At times it sounded as if Timothy Leary had had a hand in the writing of Phyllis Nagy's play The Strip (BBC Radio North for R4, Monday, March 27). But most of the characters were a few tabs short of a full trip, especially the Ku Klux Klan terrorist Lester (Christopher Fairbanks) who had hardly evolved from the ...

... Shorn's satirical edge was a cut above BY MOIRA PETTY Psychobabble rabble, the slavering rent-a-quote hardliners and the less than acute media analysis which so often accompanies the practice of crime and punishment, was the subject of an inventive satirical drama by Tony Duarte for the commercial work. Shorn (Independent Radio Drama Productions for London Newstalk, Saturday. June 24), set ...

... Anti-feminist message? BY MOIRA PETTY Lawyers Chartie and Stephanie took the adversarial tradition to enjoyable new depths in the courtroom drama The System of Justice (R4, Friday, May 19). Stephanie's client Ray was a bigtime villain, but she scared the life out of me when she unleashed her vitriolic tongue on him. Then she turned her atten tion to her former flame Charlie, who had made a ...

... Domestic drama well judged BY MOIRA PETTY Few playwrights have caught the stultifying nature of family relationships better than Tennessee Williams. Gordon House's supremely well-judged production of The Glass Menagerie (BBC World Service in conjunction with LA Theatre Works, from Saturday, Apnl 19) and boast ing the Broadway cast perfectly evoked what Williams called the slow and ...

... Cry of Last Orders cannot dampen spirits BY MOIRA PETTY If television or the cinema had decided to turn the latest Booker Prize&winning novel into a film, they would still be arguing about budgets, casting and script refinements. Radio, meanwhile, is up and running with Graham Swift's Last Orders (R4. Monday. February 10), even recording part of what has been described as a modem Canterbury ...