London Whether or not the motorist has any common law

right to park on a road seems to me irrelevant. He has two moral rights which comprise the under-. standing on which he bought his car : the right to move and the right to stop (and this means to stop anywhere, or within easy walking distance of any- where). Neither of these rights is much good without the other, so there is no point in trying to solve our problems by simply banning road parking without giving the motorist somewhere else to park.

That these rights are now threatened by the in- crease in the number of cars on the roads is hardly the fault of any one, and thus any number, of motorists. The fault lies with a government which relies on the income--on the increasing income-- from motoring without honouring its obligation to preserve the motorists rights by allowing him in- creased space both for moving and stopping.

But by all means let us subsidise a new Victciria tube as well; it's as good a way to lose public money as any, and better than most we've heard of recently. Yet has anybody reflected that, over the years since the war, private motoring is the only form of trans- port which has shown a profit to the public?—Yours faithfully,

GAVIN LYALL 4 Nutley Terrace, NW 3 FRANCO'S SPAIN

SIR,—According to Le Monde. the New York Times. and news directly received from Madrid. all the political prisoners of the Carabanchel Prison (Madrid). about 120. have gone on hunger strike.

They have taken this step as a protest when one of the prisoners, Jose Maria Palomero Villa, was brutally slapped and humiliated by one of the guards while his family was visiting him. He was afterwards put into solitary confinement.

Three of the prisoners, Antonio Amat, Juan Gerona and Emilio Sanz, went to see the Director of the Prison and expressed the solidarity of the whole of them with their companion.

Antonio Amat is the socialist leader whose arrest sixteen months ago with fifty others provoked a world-wide movement of protest.

The above-mentioned and others up to twelve have also been put into confinement; among them is the well-known novelist Luis Goytisolo. Neither

WHITE ANGLO-SAXON PROTESTANT

SIR.—I am sorry I did not type my letter printed in your issue of April 22. I did not write that `every protestant from Cobbett to . . . Morris must be condensed'—a most unusual form of punishment! What I wrote was, of course, 'condemned'---by your reviewer.—Yours faithfully, MARGARET COLE 107 OakWood Court, W14

HOW MUCH?

SIR,—Although the dental surgeon so far has never threatened to strike, the irony of the present situa- tion is that the ill-informed or misinformed Com- mission has virtually recommended that dentists should go on a partial strike in order that incomes of dentists, however skilled and conscientious, must always, on the average, be below those of their medical colleagues.

The fact that general dental practitioners have been able to get through more work than was antici- pated has incurred the disapproval of the Commis- sion, and it would seem the only way this dis- approval can be avoided is for dentists in future to refuse to extend their hours to cope with an urgent and increasing public demand.

In so doing they would, of course, reduce their incomes, thereby satisfying the Commission, only to incur the hostility of patients in urgent and often pitiful need of treatment. This is 'The Dentists'

Dilemma:—Yours faithfully, CHARLES DILLON

Caladh, Fort William. Inverness-shire IS THIS A RECORD?

SIR,--1 went to Aldershot the other day, and was passing the Hippodrome Theatre when I noticed a loudspeaker fixed outside, from which some rather bad piano-playing was coming. I learned that there was a lady inside who was trying to play the piano continuously for 132 hours, that there was a doctor in attendance, that her feet and ankles were badly swollen, and that admission cost Is. for adults and 6d. for children.

Is this a record? (Not, of course, for piano- playing, but for lunacy?)—Yours faithfully, A. a. CHERRYMAN London, W9 The Most Happy Fella. (Coliseum.) — Johnny the Priest. (Princes.)— The Happy Haven. (Bristol.) — A Passage To India. (Comedy.)

LORD BEAVEFtBROOK'S

favourite musical re- ceived a panning from Beaverbrook's, presum- ably, favourite critics, but I can see, or rather hear, what raised the Citizen Kane in him. The Most Happy Fella has a genuine, rousing, big musical noise about it. Even in the Chedder Gorge vastness of the Coliseum, the sound waves race out from the stage and break over the Circle to set the ear- drums thrumming, The best things in the evening are the old-fashioned show-stoppers, with a confi- dent beat and a sort of relaxed punchiness, like 'Standing On The Corner,' and `Big D,' and 'The Most Happy Fella.' They tap their energy from an Ur-Oklahoma, a postulated cache of sophisti- ciled folksiness unearthed in a dell of Central Park : they are part of that brash, confident, tourist-advertisement romanticism which Ameri- cans seem to be able to spin endlessly around their own place-names, racial types and social customs in musical theatre. It does not matter that the story is improbably sentimental, that the characters are impossibly wholesome, that the progression of situations is weathered and patinated with age. Enthusiasm and gaiety and high spirits are—almost—all in this kind of entertainment.

The Most Happy Fella coasts along jovially. despite its three-hour length, on this boost. But there is really a split between the musical talents here--between the one who wrote 'Praise The Lord and Pass the Ammunition' and the one who wrote `Fugue For Tinhorns'—and unfortunately it is the better which is the evil of two Loessers. The aim behind the show is a sympathetic, though still pathetic and/or joyous, parody of Italian opera----The Goil of the Golden West. Yet too many of the forty-one numbers (excluding reprises) remain just snippets and snatches of pastiche Puccini which faint and fail in the air lacking the continuous melodic invention to sus- tain them. The ambition and daring of the attempt, the very abundance and generosity of the execution, eventually defeat their own aim. Like a man faced with two Christmas dinners, 1 began to push away rich and fruity dishes I would have wolfed on other days. I liked the ingratiating homeliness of Edwin Stelfe as the most happy man (he alternates with Inia Wiata), the pixie punch of Libi Staiger as the steel-plated soubrette, the Michelin bounce of Jack Delon as her fat suitor, even the rather obviously sugared looks and voice of Helena Scott as the waitress heroine. But in the end, which is long in coming. the whole thing became just Too Much.

Johnny the Priest will be unfrocked this week- end, so there seems little point now in estimating

Big Noise

By ALAN BRIEN

Theatre

tion when the masses band together to destroy the make-shift Messiahs they do not understand.

Mr. Arden's personal theatrical problem seems to be how to keep his theme alive without strip- ping his characters to puppets. In this joint pro- duction of the Bristol Old Vic and the University Drama Department, most of the actors are in masks—a device which usually destroys drama for me. But Michael Ackland's faces are designed with horrible cunning and themselves act better than many a West End mummer's real flesh. The black comedy glitters and glowers through Wil- liam Gaskill's ruthlessly inventive production and the entire cast project John Arden's savage in- sights with rare intelligence and energy. I hope to write more about this play when it appears, as it must, in London.