The Spectator's Arts Round-up
ART
Hayward Gallery: as well as the Bridget Riley retrospective (reviewed on page 183), there is an exhibition of ,,Piscator theatre designs. Tate Gallery: the current special show is of the Alistair MacAlpine Gift of sculpture — mainly young British moderns whose works are designed to sprawl, and do. Victoria and Albert: Museum: little publicised but not to be missed is the violently disrespectful exhibition of caricatures, The Franco-Prussian War and the Commune. Queen's Gallery: nearly 100 pictures by old Dutch masters (including six Rembrandts), cleaned to mint condition and stunningly displayed.
CINEMA
Opening next week: James Ivory's latest Indian film, Bombay Talkie, at the Paris-Pullman; Barry Newman in a car chase in Vanishing Point at the Odeon, Leicester Square; Barbara Perkins and Patrick Allen in Puppet on a Chain at the London Pavilion; all August 5.
Pick of the London runners: Death in Venice, which could be a masterpiece and is certainly a compelling beautiful screen treatment of Thomas Mann's story, made by Luchino Visconti and starring Dirk Bogarde (Times, Baker Street); Sunday, Bloody Sunday, a contemporary man-boy-woman triangle, which is John Schlesinger's brilliant follow-up to Midnight Cowboy, with Peter Finch, Murray Head and Glenda Jackson as the trio under stress (Leicester Square Theatre); Claire's Knee, another of writerdirector Eric Rohmer's intellectually stimulating "moral tales" (Curzon); two bright and efficient American comedies, Summer of '42 (Warner West End) and Diary of a Mad Housewife (Plaza); there's a summ er season of Buster Keaton comedies at Academy One; and a revival of Laurence Olivier's Hamlet film at Academy Two.
SON ET LUMIERE
With a script by Robert Gittings, the Son et Lumiere presentation in St Paul's Cathedral, revived this summer for a second time, is concerned with the history of the cathe-, dral from its building by Wren to the present day; voices heard include those of Al0 Guinness (as Wren), Ralph Richardson and John Neville; the performances duTing August (every evening except Sundays and Mondays) begin at 9 pm. .To
MUSIC
Sir Arthur Bliss is to attend the Eightieth Birthday Concert in his honour at the Victoria and Albert Museum this Sunday (August 1), the last concert in the summer festival season presented at the museum by Philo nusica of London.
FESTIVALS
Harrogate Festival of Arts and Sciences (August 1-14) includes a valuable series of young musicians' concerts in the morning 3, as well as the Academy of St Martin's, the English Chamber Orchestra, Netherlands Wind and the London Symphony Orchestra. During the second week there are six p arformances by the London Contemporary Dance Theatre.
THEATRE
Opening in London: The Avengers, based on the television series, but with Simon Oates as Steed and Sue Lloyd as his girl friend, at the Prince of Wales, August 2; Pork, a first-play by Andy Warhol, at the Roundhouse, also August 2; Danton's Death, National Theatre production by Jonathan Miller of the Buchner play, with Christopher Plummer as Danton, Charles Kay as Robespierre, Ronald Pickup as St Just, at the New, August 3; A Voyage Round My Father, with Alec Guinness as the parent in John Mortimer's play, at the Haymarket, August 4; Hamlet, with Ian McKellen as the Prince in a production already seen in the provinces, at the Cambridge, August 5. Out of Town: Mirandolina: La Locandiera, a new translation by David Daiches of Goldoni's comedy, at the Gardner Centre for the Arts (between Brighton and Lewes), August 2. Change of cast: Marius Goring and John Fraser take over on Monday from Paul Rogers and Donal Donnelly (who themselves took over from Anthony Quayle and Keith Baxter) in Anthony Shaffer's long-running murder play, Sleuth, at the St Martin's. Worth seeing in London: Butley, Simon Gray's sardonic comedy of a bad day in the life of a homosexual university lecturer (Criterian); Kean, a fictionalized treatment of the eighteenth-century actor, originally by Dumas but given fresh philosophical overtones in this adaptation by Jean-Paul Sartre, with a dazzling performance by Alan Badel (Globe); Forget-Me-Not Lane, a Peter Nichols comedy about a crumbling marriage, touching and true and as funny as you would expect from a man whose sense of humour has previously been able to cope with both spastic and geriatric problems (Apollo); Vivat! Vivat Regina! Robert Bolt's version of the mirror-image rivalry of Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots, who are now being played by Margaret Tyzack and Judy Parfitt (Piccadilly); and for fun, Look, No Hands! with a masterly comic performance by Harry Towb (Fortune) and Move Over Mrs Markham, a farce of which Feydeau would not have been ashamed (Vaudeville). Alan Bates in Zr and as ' Butley '
Previous page
