"The Spectator's Arts Round-up
CINEMA
Pick of the London runners: Sunday, Bloody Sunday, a triangular affair (man, boy and girl, with, in the fashion of our day, the boy in the middle), starring Glenda Jackson, Peter Finch and Murray Head, and brilliantly directed by John Schlesinger (Leicester Square Theatre); Dearest Love, Louis Malle's first feature film for five years, a beautiful statement of the case for incest in the upbringing of a sensitive lad (Curzon); a couple of funny American comedies, Diary of a Mad Housewife (Plaza) and Summer of '42 (Warner West End); Vanishing Point, with Barry Newman as a man pitted against the law and the landscape, driving from Denver to San Francisco in fifteen hours (Odeon, Leicester Square).
OPERA
At the Maitings, presented by the Aldeburgh Festival in association with the English Opera Group. Three works by Benjamin Britten : The Turn of the Screw (August 26 and 28); Noye's Fludde (August 30 and September 4): A Midsummer Night's Dream (September 2 and 3).
THEATRE
Opening in London: Jump!, Larry Gelbart's comedy, with Warren Mitchell and Sheila Staefel, at the Queen's on August 31 (the official 'first night' postponed from August 26, but previews are currently in progress). Worth seeLlg: Hamlet, with Ian McKellen as the prince, Susan Fleetwood as Ophelia and Faith Brook as a knock-out Gertrude (Cambridge); A Voyage Round My Father, John Mortimer's gently evocative reminiscences of life with a blind father, perceptively played by Alec Guinness; Enemies, the Royal Shakespeare Company's re-discovery of a Maxim Gorki play, which is like Galsworthy rewritten by Chekhov (Aldwych, in repertory); Butley, Simon Gray's sardonic comedy of a bad day in the life of a homosexual university lecturer (Criterion); Kean, a fictionalized treatment of the eighteenth-century actor, by Jean-Paul Sartre (after Dumas), with a dazzling performance by Alan Bade! (Globe); Forget-Me-Not Lane, a Peter Nichols comedy about a crumbling marriage (Apollo); Vivat! Vivat Regina! Robert Bolt on the rivalry of Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots, with Margaret Tyzack and Judy Parfitt (Piccadilly).
EDINBURGH
The 25th Edinburgh International Festival continues till September 11. Highlights include the Prospect Theatre Company's King Lear at the Assembly Hall; The Sinner's Tale (adapted from James Hogg's Confessions of a Justified Sinner) at the Lyceum; the Young Vic at Haymarket Ice Rink; Scottish Opera (this week), Deutsche Oper Berlin (next week) and Royal Danish Ballet (third week) at the ,King's; the London Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, London Symphony and other orchestras at Usher Hall; Military Tattoo on the Castle esplanade; etc.
Previous page
