17 NOVEMBER 1984, page 46

Television

Folk opera Alexander Chancellor rrhe Dismissal, a six-part Australia' .1. political soap opera, is about the r i , se and fall of the former Labor Prime ter, Mr Gough Whitlam.......

Cinema

Phantasmagoria Peter Ackroyd The fact that John Irving's novels are impossible mpossible to break up and then reassemble in the shape of a film narrative does not seem to have......

Theatre

Confounding Christopher Edwards Mother Courage (RSC Barbican) B recht's claim as one of the 20th- century masters of theatre has always struck me as a very suspect proposition......