The Observer from London, Greater London, England • 22

22 SUNDAY 1 NOVEMBER 1987 OBSERVER REVIEW MS NEIL LIBBERT On with the status quo Mayakovsky Theatre and Maggie Smith in Peter Shaffer's Lettice and MICHAEL RATCLIFFE NOT THE LEAST of several ironies fluttering delicately around the Alayakovsky Theatre of Moscow's performance of Tomorrow Was War at the Lyttelton Theatre on Wednesday was the voice of Vanessa Redgrave welcoming us warmly to a National Theatre on none of whose stages has she, alas, ever performed. Later she reminded us through the words of a character she was doing a heroic live headphone translation for the entire three hours of Boris Vasi-liev's play that truth must never become dogma, but is bound all the time to test its strength and purpose. Yes, of course, and it was Lenin who said so. She was both supportively wonderful catching, by a quick turn of voice, the patronising flirtatious-ness of a father towards his daughter's friends from school, and the dignity of the girl's suicide ('she simply fell asleep') when he was wrongfully arrested for embezzlement and she was faced with expulsion from the Komsomol and also misleadingly so. It was often impossible to know which of the many characters was speaking, with the result that all of them parent, headmaster, party member, drop out, ideologue sounded justified, gentle and wise.

then the play, which looks back with hindsight on a school class in the summer of 1940, and brought the NT's triumphant first International Theatre Season to a touching, instructive but not quite triumphant close, is inclined to do that, too. It speaks Jess with the voice of gliisut'it than with the conventional blanket forgiveness which leaves everything and everyone exactly where they were. It seemed a very circumspect affair compared, for example, to the defiant emotional extravagance and cosmopolitanism of Victor Slav-kin's which preceded it by six months in 1985 and was seen at Riverside in July during LIFT, or Valentin Gubareyev's extraordinary Chernobyl play, now transferred to The Mermaid by the RSC and on no account to be missed. Surely there were Soviet plays and books before 1985 suggesting that girls might want to be girls and that a fanatically exact interpretation of Stalinist orthodoxy was not altogether a good thing? The 1 rebellion of Vasiliev's class 9B is only against the unfeeling strictness of their form mistress, and it is a measure of its equivocation elsewhere that we were tempted to wonder whether Valendra Andronovna might not after all have had a point. 0.

E. Prokofieva played her with relentless precision, swooping down on all irregularities like a skinny, fanatic bird. She was also the first to crack into tears at the curtain call, which was not only entirely proper and Russian but confirmed that she had been acting with the intensity of painful truth. Maggie Smith is back in the West Maggie Smith in Lettice and acting with her wrists, describing circles in the air, winding invisible wool, wringing her hands and raising her Lettice is a fey heritage comedy about the decline and fall of practically everything in which Miss Smith plays an incorrigible romancer and stately home guide sacked for embellishing dull facts with theatrical imagination by Lotte Schoen (Tyzack), her ferocious employer at the Conservation Trust. How the two lonely women come together in shared regret for the pride and grandeur of the world all gone takes up the rest of the play why they do not end up in bed together is its greatest mystery, and when they perform historical charades with a sitcom fervour that leads to a charge of attempted murder Mr Shaffer leads us way past embarrassment and whimsy into the land beyond belief.

Tyzack who gives the funniest and most touching performance of the night. Tyzack plays lugubrious cello to Smith's skittering fiddle, turning upon her partner's wilder fancies the heavy-lidded countenance of a gundog turned to stone. She mourns the architectural destruction of London with passion she is gorgeous. predecessors is that, following two marvellous performances in plays by Cocteau and PoJiakoff at Hammersmith and the National, we now know she is acting like this because she wants to and not because she can no longer do anything else. The second is that, for once, she has an adversary and partner entirely her match Margaret End, acting with her wrists, describing circles in the air, winding invisible wool, wringing her hands and raising her eyes, tearfully helpless before the complexities of the micro-chip age.

She is the star of Peter Shaffer's new comedy Lettice and Lovage at the Globe, and the first main difference between this display and its Bring back the Skylon jl mi tural conception, acting as an outpost for it of A suitable case for revival STEPHEN GARDINER An odd God allowed Radio 4's new soap opera, 'Citizens' PAUL FERRIS fiction with The Golden Ass, which Peter Mackie turned into something less than a romp for Radio 3. The adventures of a man who dabbles in witchcraft and is turned into an ass, from which standpoint he observes the human scene and finds it, on the whole, beastly, resist, or in this case resisted, theatrical treatment. It plodded, like the ass going up one of those hills; where was the wicked flavour of the old Penguin edition Two hours was about an hour too long. The most adventurous play of the week' was Dancing with the Dragon. This was trailed by Jonathan Ross, who was recruited to record announcements for Drug Alert week, as 'the first real drama ever heard on Radio I Alex Renton wrote it as propaganda aimed at tomorrow's junkies who might yet be turned.

The action consisted of young Mike (William Armstrong) screwing or rather re-screwing up his life over a day or so, and ending up full of heroin and going nowhere. The novelty lay in the detail and the language. No doubt for that very reason, it went out at seven in the evening, hardly the best time to reach its target audience. ADVANCE publicity for Citizens, Radio 4's new twice-weekly soap, included a press conference on Euston Station, where some of the exchanges heard in another bit of publicity, a documentary called The Making of Citizens, must have been recorded. The man from the Guardian was heard asking one of those fearless Fleet Street questions.

'Are he asked Marilyn Imrie, quietly Soaps on radio, as on television, are OK products, better written than they used to be, guaranteed moral and decent. In Making of we heard Imrie, the serial's editor, agree cautiously to the odd God and the odd bloody in scripts if absolutely essential. But be careful about she warned the writers, since baby William, son of central character Alex, was born the wrong side of the blanket (an old-fashioned phrase they would not approve of Imrie stopped a Press release that called Alex an unmarried mother'). Episodes one and two established the kind of people-mixture at 5 Limerick Road you might expect script conferences to come up with, including Michael who 'THE SKYLON wouldn't have been blown over by the Philip Powell told me. He was talking about the most breathtaking structure to come out of England this century, and which he and ins partner, Hidalgo Moya, designed for the 1951 Festival of Britain on London's South Bank.

For those who remember the Skylon's very tall tube of light hovering miraculously in the dark night sky above the Dome of Discovery, pavilions and fountains for a mere six months, this news might seem as amazing as the structure's feat of engineering in itself. Powell said It would have been held in position like a tree restrained by cables. Pity there wasn't 36 hums warning of the hurricane restrained in this way, trees would have been An opportunity to resurrect the Skylon suddenly arose recently with the call for a memorial to the Battle of Britain a huge object of unbelievable clumsiness, something like a heavy paper-weight blown-up to a height of 600 feet, and peddled with masses of publicity, had been proposed for London's Docklands. Size has nothing to do with quality and, although enormous, this Post-Modern monster would be made to look ridiculous by the clusters of skyscrapers at present threatening the area. The Skylon, on the other hand, was unique, a precursor of space-age imagery, a brilliant idea of rare imagination that matched the spirit of that battle like that battle too, it belonged to real town-planning significance.

There is, however a further reason for selecting this site surprisingly, the foundations for the structure still exist under the tarmac of the car park there. 'And Hidalgo Moya said, amounted to half the cost of the entire It wouidn't, therefore, be that expensive to erect. But there is a reason for wanting the Skylon back that has nothing to do with anything except the structure itself, and this is, of course, that so fantastic an invention should not be lost to the capital forever. It was a beautiful object, an unmistakable and simple statement that made a real tribute to British innovation. The architects won the commission in a national competition when in their twenties, and Moya says that the idea for it was directly sparked off by the competition conditions what was required for the Festival was a vertical feature that should rise above all the exhibition buildings.

When, much to their amazement, they won the competition, they took their idea along to the engineer, Felix Samuely, who simplified it 'It was his eye for detail and genius for the architects say, that made it what it The wife of another architect, Mrs Sheppard-Fidier, gave it its name the Skylon 'perfect, rhyming with pylon and nylon, and, of course, zooming for the sky. the sky, creating a picture which, printed on the memory, has never been forgotten. The obvious position for the Skylon is the site for which it was designed between Hungeifoid Bridge and (he old Greater London Council building. This area hasn't changed much in the last four decades, it's not under threat and, at 300 feet high, the Skylon would hold its own with the abominable Shell building. But there are other reasons.

Between Hungerford and Waterloo bridges, a daring scheme is underway for the rejuvenation of the concrete arts centre from the Festival Hall to the Hayward Gallery sponsored by. Stuart Lipton and designed by Terry Farrell, this aims at turning depressing appearances into something really exciting with vast coverings of glass and the removal of overhead walkways. In addition, this will complement Greycoat's reconstruction of Charing Cross station (also by Farrell) on the opposite bank. With these plans bringing the sides of the river into a closer association of ideas, the Skylon, outside their immediate area, could give another dimension to the architec has just arrived from Liverpool after a row with his father, a woman doctor (young, Hindu), and an old codger aged at least 50 (English, garrulous) in the basement flat. Last week's script (Leigh Jackson) was fluent enough the thing has a budding charm.

A couple of millenia before soaps were thought of, Apuleius was helping invent the episode in The Skylon in 1951 Zooming for the sky. 8 ST ANDREW'S HILL, LONDON EC4V 5JA. 01-236 LETTERS Insult at end of empire Why Act should be changed Angela Phillips (Weekend, last week), not only misrepresents the facts of the dispute over David Alton's proposal to amend the Abortion Act, she appears to have missed the point of the debate over abortion. She quotes the 'tiny number' of abortions taking place after 24 weeks but neglects to mention the fact that 5,000 abortions are performed annually after 18 weeks (the limit proposed in the Bill). Ms Phillips writes at length about a presumed 'right' to kill by abortion babies whose survival is alleged to be potentially inconvenient but she does not see that if the right survive.

We cannot ignore this fact, and so the abortion laws must be re-examined. I was rather bemused by Ms Phillips' accusation that Mr Alton regards unborn babies with astounding romanticism and yet herself talks about abortion in abstract terms such as calling a halt and ending a pregnancy Colette McLoughlin, Liverpool. to life is destroyed, all other rights become meaningless. Brian Collins, W5. Angela Phillips claims that David Alton is 1 exploiting widespread unease about a number of late abortions' quite right too.

Enormous advances have been made in the care of premature babies. Infants who would have died 20 years ago can now I was interested in Mr Evers-ley's reaction (News, last week) at finding himself in the position of having to pay 60 for the privilege of becoming something he already is. I was born and brought up in St Vincent which, at the time of my birth and considerably longer, was proud to be part of the empire on which the sun never set. In 1941 I was one of the first three from that island to volunteer to serve in the RAF. rather longer than Britain's first woman Prime Minister.

The going rate was 37.50. Perhaps Mr Eversley has not yet come to terms with the fact that politicians, for the most part, will opt for expediency rather than generosity and this is something we all have to learn to live with. But I can still remember being surprised, at the time, by the strength of my feelings of rejection and betrayal. Douglas Grant, Richmond. which I did until 1946.

After the war I settled in Britain, worked, paid my taxes, never broke the law and behaved in every way like the host of model, dull British citizens, who form the vast majority of people who inhabit this country of which I was one or so I thought. In 1980 I was informed that, I must apply and pay to become what I had been a somewhat shorter time than the then Leader of the Opposition but others. I suspect that this is what may have happened in the case of Anne Kirk. Francis No defence for jail book attack With its class envy and vindic- that the arts in London would be in a far better way if more boroughs were, to quote Michael Ratcliffe, as Philistine as Hammersmith and Fulham He would be far better employed using his undoubted talents to persuade central Government to ease the pressure on councils such as ours so that the financial uncertainty surrounding theatres such as the Lyric could be removed. Ivan Gibbons, Chair, Leisure and Recreation Committee, London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham.

publicly, but to seek legal redress. No one has done so. Released detainees have stated publicly that they have been well treated. This is a published fact, not an opinion of a Minister. Vines insinuated that Jenny Chin had said so only because her husband is still under detention.

Jenny Chin's statement was made to two foreign (Malaysian) newspapers which had interviewed her. Vines also omitted mention of two other freed detainees Mah Lee Lin, who said that I have been treated nicely by the officers. They gave me everything I and Ng Bee Leng, whose mother denied Supplement sins I applaud your programme to renew the trees of the south of England (' Britain can be green again last week) and suggest that one way of getting to your target might be to cut down the ridiculous size that your paper has now grown to. Dr A. R.

I. Cruickshank, Hinchley. Other educators, thinking of inviting potentially controversial speakers, be warned. Ben Pimlott, Professor of Politics and Contemporary History, Birkbeck College, WC1 Wicket wrongs Scyld Berry is wrong in stating (Sport, last week) that under Clive Lloyd, the West Indies lost only one world cup match the final of 1983. In the 1983 competition the West Indies also lost their operating groups match to India in addition to losing the final, also to India.

May I also request Mr Berry to stop repeating that India won their first series in England in 1986. For the record, India registered their first Test series victory against England in England in 1971 and broke Illingworth's record of 20-odd Tests without defeat Kuttan Menon, N7. Africa's agony In his review of Shoah (Television, last week), John Naughton writes Ever since records have been kept, societies have harboured genocidal grudges against certain groups. He cites numerous instances of large-scale slaughter of Armenians, Kulaks, Cambodians, Hindus and Muslims, ending with and of course, of the six million Jews annhilated by the Third Reich'. One wonders at the omission of any reference to the experience of blacks in Africa, who have been visited with comparable mischief from time to time, particularly the annihilation of the greater pan of the Herero tribe by the German colonial administration in Namibia, pursuing a final solution locally and ably continued by the South African successors.

This was before the emergence of the Third Reich: perhaps a rehearsal for things to come thereafter. E.Gani, NW8. tiveness against a young girl who clearly has suffered, Anne Kirk's article 'Drugs Should not Lead to Fame (Weekend, last week) is a sad and ugly one I know no more of Rosie Johnston than could be learnt from the papers. But she was neither a drug-addict nor a drug pusher. As a first offender, she received what many of us considered a barbarous sentence of nine months, merely because she had committed the folly of acting, on a single occasion, as a transporter of drugs for her friend Olivia Channon.

Lecture that taught a lesson Two errors of fact in one sentence is pretty good going, even for a gossip column. In your Back Page item (18 October), about an impending talk by Sir Alfred Sherman at the Institute of Historical Research, you state that they (the institute) thought nothing of inviting him to talk on immigration at their seminar. Twice wrong. The institute didn't invite him. The institute is simply the venue for regular meetings arranged by a group of historians, of whom I am one, interested in twentieth century politics and administration.

More importantly, Sir Alfred wasn't invited to talk about immigration. We wanted to hear him because of his experience of government as a Thatcher adviser. When he was invited, however no subject having been specified he announced that he would speak on the history of something he called 'mass immigration'. Alas, no bells rang. Then came his well publicised bid to give a platform to I.e Pen.

At this point, Sherman was asked whether, in the circumstances, he might talk about something different. He refused, point blank. We were then advised that like it or not the meeting would have to go ahead, because of a new law that came into effect on 1 September preventing the cancellation for political reasons of meetings held in higher educational Torture claims lack evidence Steve Vines's article We were beaten claim "Marxist plot" Like a friend of mine, she was, because of her education and class, subjected to vicious treatment in prison. Unlike my friend, a mature woman, she is probably unlikely to be able to put memories of that vicious treatment behind her. If Anne Kirk considers it proper that she herself should write an article about the grimness of her own and her drug-addict daughter's experiences, why is it improper Risks women face I quote from Peter Corrigan's piece Villains or Victims (Sport, last week).

The kerbs of our major towns and cities are crawling with gentlemen from all walks of life intent on playing their part in preserving the oldest profession, and, however much we deplore it, at least the innocent are not affected' (my italics). Mr Corrigan's last phrase is insulting and wrong. He has not considered that any woman may be followed and propositioned by a kerb-crawler or, indeed, how upsetting such an encounter can be for a woman especially if she happens to be on her own Or perhaps Mr Corrigan considers that any woman out walking, particularly after dark, is by definition not innocent and, therefore, fair game for passing male motorists like Mr Pleat. Erica Burch, allegations that her daughter had been ill-treated or tortured, and stated in fact she had put on weight while under detention. Mrs Mary Seet-Ching, High Commissioner of the Republic of Singapore, SW1.

March passed As one of the 75,000 people who marched from Embankment to Hyde Park last Saturday to demonstrate against South Africa's apartheid regime, I am sure I am not alone in my despondency at your apparent ignorance of the event. I am surprised because The Observer usually has something of a reputation as a campaigner for the freedom of blacks in South Africa. Helen Slingsby, E7. detainees (News, 18 October), alleged that 'separate inquiries conducted by The Observer in Singapore' have uncovered 'evidence of torture presented by sources close to the detainees'. Vines has produced no hard evidence to support his allegations.

If he has any, he should publish it. The Singapore Government has never denied that detainees are not put under psychological pressure during their interrogations. However, as Home Affairs Minister, Professor S. Jayakumar informed Vines, no detainees have ever been tortured or mistreated and anyone who has been mistreated is entitled not only to complain Foul fantasy I could not believe my eyes as I read about what Clive James felt about the topless young ladies' sunbathing at Biarritz and what it made him want to do to them (Review, last week). This is nothing short of pornography.

Or do vou feel that it is Stage set for action on cash Your theatre critic's article Review, 18 October), on the future funding commitment of this borough to the Lyric Theatre, was offensive and demoralising to all of us in Hammersmith and Fulham trying to keep the arts flag flying in the face of relentless Government financial pressure. With 1.2 million being spent by this borough on the arts this year, we would argue that Rosie Johnston should write a book about the grimness of her months in prison My observation has been that parents of drug-addicts often suffer from an irrational feeling of guilt In an attempt to escape from this guilt, they give way to a no less irrational blaming of acceptable for men to want to sexually assault women and girls Martin Blamire, Birmingham. Back to nature John Weston wins this week's 25 prize with his Norwegian wood..