The Observer from London, Greater London, England • 79

Arts 13 SUNDAY 12 DECEMBER 1993 Michael Coveney Gumming to the Cabaret self-referential coded hints as the author, in the guise of the Hunter, returns to haunt seven scenes of his former life as though they were stations of the Cross. Sylvester Morand, looking like a more grizzled version of Caspar David Friedrich's 'Wanderer', appears in the Alps on a cloud of late Beethoven quartets and descends to visit the towns and cafes where his acquaintances, and a girl who rums out to be his daughter, are flashed up with the fractured plausibility of a waking dream. An encounter with a Japanese man, who asks the Hunter to assist in his death because people these days want cheap, shoddy goods, not quality stuff, is amazing. The man is called Hiroshima. Is that weird, or what? The comic surrealism of Kenneth McLeish's translation is fully honoured in David Farr's production, with witty designs by Angela Davies.

Choices Night After Night (Royal Court, 071 730 1745). Neil Bartlett's search for his father in the world of the Fifties West End musicals. Original, personal, funny, beguiling. Jamais Vu (Vaudeville, 071 836 9987). Ken Campbell brings his award-winning one man odyssey from Gants Hill to the West End.

One Man (Garrick, 071 494 5085). Steven Berkoff blazes away as Poe's murderer, a bitter actor and a football thug and his simultaneous Rottweiler. Travels with my Aunt (Whitehall, 071 867 11 19). Marvellous distillation of Graham Greene's novel with William Gaunt and John Wells. and suspenders, silk lingerie, a battery of lightbulbs.

The still centre of decency and vulnerability is expressed by Sara Kestelman and George Raistrick as the threatened older Jewish lovebirds. Kestelman, in a role played pungently by Lotte Lenya and scattily by Lila Kedrova, is a revelation. She sings strongly and surely and tells us, in her eyes and in her longing, about the persecutions of the century. Elsewhere, we meet up again with the two peripatetic maternal giants of world theatre: Rose, the mother of Gypsy Rose Lee, pushing her daughters from Seattle to Omaha in the Twenties while vaudeville is overtaken by burlesque; and Brecht's Mother Courage, pulling her canteen wagon, and her three children, around Central Europe during the Thirty Years War. Both shows define the art of scrapinga living in hostile circumstances.

Both heroines are appealing, imperfect and tragic. They lose their children but carry on, one exploding into a nervous breakdown finale, the other trudging defiantly onwards with her cart. Mama Rose is described as 'a pioneer woman without a frontier'. Mother Courage has fewer pretensions to glamour, but a similar wanderlust and an equally low opinion of men. Sheila Hancock leads the West Yorkshire Playhouse production of Gypsy and, like Angela Lansbury 20 years ago in London, proves that the role is not the sole property of Ethel Merman.

In terms of colour, variety, humour, pathos and vocal authority, I doubt if Miss Hancock's performance has been surpassed in Britain this year. She is tough, raucous and overwhelmingly tender when pierced by her daughter's killer accusation: 'I thought you did it for me, Sliding a leg through her dress, and swinging her beads round her neck, like Beatrice Lillie, until they fall to the floor, Miss Hancock tears up the stage in 'Rose's Turn', the magnificent number in which she finally moves centre stage, having merely hogged the limelight from the wings. The music of Jule Styne and the lyrics of Stephen Sondheim are as irresistible as ever. Arthur Laurents's book remains a triumph of dynamic, controlled narration with several strands: the life of a travelling troupe; the defection of Baby June (a sinister, AT LAST it happened. A critic danced on stage on a first night, and the 'show wasn't even Hair.

Musicals man Mark Steyn accepted Alan Cumming's invitation to trip the light not so fantastic before the second act of Sam Mendes's overpowering revival of Cabaret at the Donmar Warehouse. The boy did well. So did Cumming, who follows his androgynous, witty Hamlet at this address with a leering and technically faultless appropriation (from Joel Grey and Barry Dennen) of the Berlin master of ceremonies. The 1966 musical book by Joe Masteroff, lyrics by Fred Ebb, music by John Kander is so much better than the very fine 1972 Bob Fosse film. Cafe tables replace the stalls.

The aroma of the Kit Kat Club sucks in the audience (which included Bob Geldof, Jonathan Pryce and Cameron Mackintosh; and that was just around my table) along with Chris Bradshaw, the Americanised writer based on Christopher Isherwood, endearingly played byAdamGodley. The club's resident star is Sally Bowles, whom Jane Horrocks presents as a- cut-glass, vulnerable waif far removed from Judi Dench's gin-sodden croaker in the first London production. A few years ago, Kelly Hunter came close in a version with Wayne Sleep as a sinister chorus boy. But Horrocks and Cumming go deeper. Horrocks's Sally reveals herself in songi and covers up in the dialogue; this system breaks down totally, and memorably, in the title number.

She is slumming from the high life, embracing decadence in a red tutu, sucking on a lollipop. Cumming is everywhere: preening with Fraulein Schneider's pineapple, pushing up through political cracks as the insidious embodiment of an Otto Dix ambivalence (hair in bangs, made-up nipples), incipient bisexual Nazism (his bare bum tattooed with a swastika), the louche, quickchange spirit of the age. The design of Sue Blane, the musical direction of Paddy Cunneen and the sleazy, often horizontal, choreography of Lea Anderson, conspire to produce the wheeziness and delight of this George Grosz playground with a world of flagrant brass sounds, thighs squeaky infant offering herself, like Shirley Temple, for adult pleasures); and the rise of the elder sister, Louise, into burlesque stardom as Gypsy Rose Lee, the francophone ecdysiast ('Stripper? At those prices, I'm an Rose holds everything together, as does Brecht's heroine in Mother Courage and Her Children (RNT, Cottesloe), a jaunty, decent production by Anthony Clark for the National's education department. Hanif Kureishi's translation and Sue Davies's lyrics were made for the RSC's spectacular, sensual 1984 staging, with Judi Dench and Zoe Wana-maker. They are worth hearing again.

Powerful new music by Mark Vibrans, and a vital, cheeky-chappie performance by Ellie Haddington reinforce an earthy, music-hall, no-nonsense quality. What you miss is the epic, outdoor scale and the barbaric realism. Kate Burnett's design is a cutout white-washed townscape, an immobile truck, anything-goes costumes and a downstage Bakelite wireless which crackles with BBC Home Service historical updates. It is sometimes difficult to see the point of Moliere in English. Not at the Almeida, where Richard Wilbur's superb 1971 rhyming verse translation of The School for Wives, Moliere's first big hit, has been revived by the theatre's co-directors, Ian McDiarmid and Jonathan Kent.

McDiarmid plays the jealous middle-aged Arnolphe, Kent directs. Each does a superb job. The provincial square, ingeniously designed by Peter Davison, where Arnolphe has imprisoned his intended young wife, Agnes, is at first glimpsed through a misty film of steadily falling rain. When the air clears, we see an elegant red brick house, high railings, a compact grove of fruit trees. A stabler vision of paradise, also with fruit trees, is visible in the image of Cranach's Garden of Eden, ironically reproduced in Agnes's bedroom.

The volatility of the weather reflects that of Arnolphe, whom McDiarmid makes funny through a brilliant display of snapping delivery and energetic obsessiveness. In extremity lies his true passion, the missing element in the 1987 National version with the more lugubrious David Ryall. McDiarmid is indeed an 'angry ferret', a description which almost pleases him after the initial shock. of the chairman who should be able to dominate both audience and contributors, while allowing listeners to believe he is hardly there. Chairman trouble, too, at Gardeners' Question Time (Sunday, Radio 4).

The charmingly ponderous Clay Jones had to retire recently through ill health. He held easy command with his rich and fruity voice, love and knowledge of gardening and ease with the audience. Sadly, he suffered a mild heart attack shortly after learning that the programme was to be farmed out for independent production. Dr Stefan Buczacki stepped up from panellist to the chairman's role. It has not been an entirely happy transition, because he obviously still aches to be participating, but I hope Buczacki will be retained when the programme is taken over by an independent production company in the spring.

Superlative: Sheila Hancock as Mama Rose in 'Gypsy' And his rage and torture are redoubled most poignantly at the moment when he realises that he really is infatuated with Agnes (Emma Fielding); their great scenes together are expertly played, one of them in so much of a downpour, and the actress in so thoroughly drenched a night shift, that you fear for Miss Fielding's health during the run. The British premiere at the Gate, Notting Hill, of Strindberg's last play, The Great Highway (1909), is an extraordinary event, with a plethora of (injury 071 240 1 Russell Twisk -0 (ROYAL OPERA HOUSE CovoU Gitrden 10661911 Sitting in uncomfy chairs two shows are pale imitations. Peter Sissons' faults have been well chewed over and he is to be replaced. Jonathan Dimbleby's role in the precious Any Questions? (Friday, repeat on Saturday, Radio 4) is another matter. His major failing is that he can't keep quiet.

Dimbleby is an interventionist chairman run riot. In last week's edition from Cheadle in Staffordshire he asked 19 questions -the public managed only six. Dimbleby treated it as his own personal interview programme, rather like BBCl's On the Record which he once chaired. He could not leave Peter Lilley alone, the thrill of having a Cabinet Minister on hand in Budget week was obviously too much for him. Back he came, time and again, it must have driven the rest of the panel wild.

Any Questions? needs a delicate touch. Its charm depends on the skills I SIR ROBIN DAY and Freddie Grisewood both had it Peter Sissons and I Jonathan Dimbleby don't. We're talking here about weight, eravitas. authority. a i Freddie Grisewood was the first and finest question master of Radio 4's Any Questions.

He dominated with his presence; nobody dared to be boring while he was in the chair. Those lucky enough to be invited attempted to live up to his impeccable standards, any slip below excellence and the speaker would never be asked again. Sir Robin, likewise, towered over the BBC1 version of the programme, Question Time. Although he seldom intervened, his smouldering presence both inspired and terrified. The present-day successors in these.