Dance and Song
The Sadler's Wells Ballet celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary with a species of gala performance : two solid old-time successes, The Rake's Progress and Facade framing Ash' ton's delicious divertissement specially created for the occasion. Birthday Offering is a show' off structure of technical accomplishment, per- formed up to the hilt by seven couples who are almost indisputably the fourteen best dancers now in the company. It is gay yet heroic, sumptuous yet simple, noble and intimate at once: the males perform a varia- tion that is, quite simply, a magnificent assault on the visual sense. The females perform exactly tailor-made solos, each fully, wittily and sympathetically bringing out her own best stylisms and mode of projection. If top-level playwrighting were in as healthY a state as the best of today's choreography. then the theatre would be already up-and' upping out of the doldrums. And the latest revue, Late Interlude, an after-the-show con- coction designed presumably to keep people In town instead of scuttling for the 10.30 to Effingham Junction, isn't quite original enough to rouse much hope for the future of revue- writing. The largely average numbers are inter, Isolated with some snappy, and snappily sung• songs by Lisa Lee; and Peter Jones makes a very good best out of some very middling material; his final sketch 'Men's Fashions' is funny but could be vastly funnier with a more solid script to support his special brand of relentlessly confused, remorselessly apologetic.
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