The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 8

I 8 ARHTS GOAJEiDlfAN. Thursday February 26 1976 IMMMMMPMW 1: v' 1 i oilekf Mrs'i: Florlan'; 'to. say, nothing of DEREK MALCOLM reviews new filW therapy is business' etc. But the wrath of its. last section buries "these.

When it matters the strength is there, together with the' feeling that, our judgment of who is mad and who is is at best' faulty arid uncertain arid at worst downright The film'' makes it tolerably clear that we may be headed down the same' road as those Russian judge as dotty those who don't agree with them. As McMurphy says, it isn't so difficult to reach the point when I think 1 Can help him really me'ans I think I ean defeat; him." Robert Altman's The Long. Goodbye took hold of the Chandler original and twisted something-new and hopefully subversive put of it, much to thejihr comfort of some who didn't want their memories demythologised, They should be happier with Ihck Rjehards's Farewell My LoveJy (Leicester Square Theatre, AA). wbJCh is by no means as considerable a movie but lets it all hang out the old way. What elements, of- refurbishment there are scarcely count.

We are in the presence of reverent if highly, enjoyable pastiche. Richards, assisted by The Long Goodbye's production team (Elliott Kastner and Jerry. Bick) and by Chinatown's excellent cinematographer-(John A. Alonzo), has a lot going for him. There's Robert Mitehum, a little old.

now for Philip Marlowe but still very much a heavyweight presence cap; able of achieving a mountain of- presence out of a molehill of acting. There's another crumpled giant in Jack O'Halloran, the ex-boxer from Philadelphia, as Moose Mallow, the jailbird who persuades Marlowe to look for his old girlfriend Velma by pJecing a hand I could have sat his apprehensive shoulder. And there's Charlotte Rampling as Velma, a part clearly modelled on Lauren Bacall's in The Big Sleep, who yet manages to 'accomplish something a little different and a little special, We even have Sylvia Miles, the former Warhol superstar, now up for an Oscar for her playing of the well- M4L0S FQRMAN'S One Flew Over the. Cuckoo's Nest (Qdeon, Leicester Square) is about an, attempted coup in an insane asylum engineered by an inmate called McMurphy who: faces and morally, defeats the standard-bearer authority; a hatchet-faced' nurse for wjiom sanctity means order rather than freedom. Taken from a- widely-read novel by Ken it is a iprime" example of bow a subject which must have looked desined for the cultural ghetto of the art circuit can be hoist' by its bootstraps into the commercial field and festooned with Oscar nominations.

You can do this of course only by compromises by engaging a star with redoubtable box-office muscle by jollying your audience along a little before the real crunch comes, and by using ag much' pure skill as you can muster while working within a fairly conventional framework. Kesey's, book, structured quite differently, made its mark another It became, by allowing no at all, a kind of sixties classic that went overground because everybody wanted. in on the fashionable secrets': of the counter-culture. The film's concessions are, however, not overly destructive, it was questionable whether anyone could have filmed the book as Kesey "wrote it certainly not Forman, with his obsessive interest in people rather than ideas his well modulated naturalistic style which allows flights of the imagination more in the watcher than up there the. "screen.

And in. Jack Nicholson as McMurphy the film, has a leading player of true class. Though you can imagine a truer-looking paranoia, it is difficult to think of a performance that could be so riveting and yet so lacking In a star's insistence on blotting out opposition. Nicholson, unlike so many of the cinema's -favourite leading men, has an extraordinary capacity to fit himself round a part rather than wrap one conveniently round him. The fact that the film' is.

different, from the book, lessMdugb-mJnded and, abstract in handling its allegory about, the nature' of authprity and revolution, should, not worry anyone unduly. In the, end It makes the same point with something of the -same power if through -altered means and towards a wider audience. Xt' is not so much about mental institutions as about what' happens when institutions of any kind take up an attitude towards those over who they have power that is fundamentally insufferable. This is where Cuckoo's Nest connects with most of Forman's previous work, which includes the American Taking' Off arid the Czechoslovakian A Blonde -in Love and Fireman's Ball. His chief lesson is not that the nurse and her cohorts are gorgons but that the evil they do is compounded by the undeniable fact that they think they are doing right.

As much like those who control Eastern Europe, in fact as capitalism's grislier lackeys. The film also about the nature of heroism, arid indeed the for it. What do we think, as the director has himsef asked, about, the who fights a tank with a broomstick? That's what McMurphy does, and inevitably he can't sweep the road, clean. But his example is ultimately seen to be the stuff of life-sustaining hope for the rest of us. The film, made at the Oregon State Institution and populated at its centre by actors and at its edges ly patients, is beautifully executed, and not only by Nicholson.

Louise Fletcher's Nurse Ratched is a superbly icy portrait of a right-thinking fanatic, missing only the sexual connotations -Kesey found but Forman avoids. The ensemble playing, as usual in Forman films, is achieved so that each of the minor parts has an entity of its own yet neatly dovetails into the whole. There are Indeed disadvantages, areas where Forman's human sympathies, attractive as they are, encourage laughs that come a trifle too easily and lessons that seem a little too glib "the business is therapy and the Folding stillness by 'Selwyn Jones-Hughes: Rochdale review sucbj-old reliables' as John ireiana (L Nulty) arid Anthony Zerbe (Laird Bru-. nette). The- tywever mmm counts for psmueh as.

the -carefully evocative settings (LA has seldom looked more like a town masquerading as a firm set) or the attentively nurtured forties styles first person nar. ration, flashback dramatisation, and all. What is more, David Zelag Goodman's screenplay leaves most of the good lines intact, cherishing them like expensive confectionery. She gave me-a smile 1 could-; feel in my hip pocket." Why grumble then Because essentially it's so earnest a walk down memory lane that Chandler-in the. end disparaged as a period piece.

Mr Richards is never so-much himself as the souped-shadow of Edward Dmytryk. I've Heard that Song Before, as the theme' tune And nostalgia shouldn't make: one self-conscious about 'it. Russian Roulette (Rialtp, Al the presence of George Segal and Denbolm Elliott, almost, totally amorphous thriller (rather better known by Its American. title pfiCosygin is Coniiflg). Segal plays a Canadian Mounted Policeman (no horse but a few horse-laughs) engaged in finding and spiriting sway a Latvian who is thought to be plotting to assassinate Premier Kosygin on a visit to Vancouver, Elliott is the secret service high-up who gets him to do" it before wandiering out of the movie as drunk and.

dishevelled, as' he presumably walked Jn from, his last drunk and dishevelled cameo, Nothing in the film really works, pot its humour nor its thrills. It was directed by Lou Lombardo; Altman's former editor, and shows quite clearly how dangerous it is to try assimilating the style of a genuine original who can't always manage it' satisfactorily himself. The' film is so unluckily put together, in fact, that if it played the title game it would undoubtedly its brains out on the first shot. American tour in 196970. The only disturbing discrepancy is that, at this point, Michelle's public career comes to an abrupt halt while Selwyn continues with lectures and shows.

At first glance the work of both artists seems so closely related as to be almost indistinguishable- The composition is developed carefully from observation to abstraction, the paint thin and dry, the colour in cool, controlled gradations of alizarin, beige, olive and air-fprce blue. The effect, though highly competent, is faintly anaemic But this is the lesser work. Upon closer examination it emerges that, far from blue-printing, these artists should complement each other 4hat is if they allow their individuality to assert itself beyond mutual companionship and training. Michelle concentrates on 'interiors-contained spatial structures such as a room of arm-chairs, a table and bookshelves whose forms are disrupted by light falling through a window; Her sense of concrete objects, their simultaneous familiarity and strangeness is very strong. But likewise her sense of space, so that her abstract works, in particular the heterogeneous shapes of Canton -Warrior, have decision, assurance, and unity.

In Selwyn's abstracted landscapes seem indeterminate, not spatial constructions so much as flat, patterned planes arranged, at first, to suggest recession. Complex, geometric preas suggestive of mechanical, objects and reflections give way to simpler, more organic shapes of fields, hills, water and sky. Then, suddenly, unsatisfied by the imitative, half-dependent element of such paintings as Sea Selwyn launches into a new technique, It is as if getting to grips with the fact that he wants to arrange oil-fiat, coloured shapes, he. abandons his aesthetic training to 'cut out wooden jig-saw pieces, cover them with bright gloss colour, and fit them together into harmonising panels. Fields, for example, consists of nine simple, ingenious and, above all, sensuously glowing variations.

As imitative representation falls behind, colour is gradually, more vividly' exploited. Thus, in A Day. With A Thousand Ideas, Selwyn finally, explodes into expression. The warm, subtle, pieces of a landscape are probed by the bright, primary decoration of a diving aeroplane, disintegrating in hilarious ecstasy. Here, at last, is a sense of exultance jn life that is the.

driving force of art. The Rochdale exhibition the persistent evolution of two artists -through to vitality possibly adds the thinnest of hopes to the exhibition of children's art in the Spinningfield showroom, Deansgate (until March 6). It is too easy to believe, moving as so often from the superb colouring, confident and bold use of space, heart-melting expression of the youngest age-range to the predominantly inhibited, derivative, and often escapist work of. the older children, that the deterioration is due to the developing self-consciousness of puberty. It is not only too easy, it Is a delusion as proved, for example, by the challenging evidence', of the Peterloo A Way Of Thinking, not long ago.

The cause is-not in the children, but in the education. version' in that series of Mussorgsky's -Pictures front an but where, the earlier issue (VH010) a Carnegie Hall performance with the text. embroidered hy- the pianist, latest issue has a more meticulous, studio performance of 1947, not avail able here before, The sound is, dangerously thin and clangy but the playing is: almost past On the. reverse qomes Brahms, including a fast1 cinating performance with Nathan Milstein of the minor Violin Sonata' with the very much taking -second 'rA( jfebsPt von KflMlari; i UMr-Berman Nicholson in One Flew Over The. Cuckpo's Nest Birmingham Rep's Brum Studio, is a massively detailed musical documentary about the consequences of the Meriden plants' closure by Norton Villiers Triumph in 1973; and once again it proves that nothing is more fascinating than' the blow by plow processes of political and industrial action.

What comes across most dearly is also the individual's need to work. Motor cycles are in your blood, one Meriden worker observed. It's like saying to Muhammad Ali pack up boxing." And that, helps to explain why a dogged band of NVT workers retused to accept that their factory was to be closed, why they occupied the site and "why they clung on for eighteen months until a Government-aided co-operative was formed. Without sentimentalising the' workers, Mr Edgar also riiakes nonsense' of one MP's sneer that the workers refused to move for fear of losing their subsidised council houses; he shows them to be motivated by a peculiar obstinate, old-fashioned pride in the product they were making, Mr Edgar has also mastered the knack of rendering complex facts in a palatable form rival statistics of the Japanese and British motor cycle industries are presented through vivid Weekend World-style coloured charts, a management consultants' report is summarised through music (good tunes by Trevor T. Smith throughout) and the negotiations between management, government and workers are presented through a casino card game.

The one thing I miss, which John McGrath's Fjsh in the Sea provided, is a sense of the impact of occupation on individual families. But, against that, in 2J hours, Mr Edgar presents us with a greater array of concrete information (including dramatisation of a Commons Debate on the motor-cycle industry) than you get in your average -TV documentary. Those who think the theatre is a peripheral art form would be well advised to catch Mr Edgar's work which goes shortly on a tour of the West Midlands. Admittedly, there are some rough edges the actual performance and the odd bit of needless editorialising (why give a Tory Cabinet Minister weak vowel But Christopher Honer's production is staged with admirable clarity: labelled T-shirts identifying Benn and Heseltine and the rest of the public figures, a Com-' mon Market Debate staged to Beet earlier, was built up as a mystery figure before we actually heard him in the flesh. So too'with Lazar Berman but without the excuse of the Cold War.

It is Gilels who is quoted most frequently on. his colleague's prowess as a virtuoso. The phenomenon of the musical world," Gilels called him, adding that if he himself and Richter played four-handed together they still wouldn't equal Berman, Now Berman is starting to appear in Western Europe and America, and at last we. have some records to whet our' appetites a set of Liszt's 12 Transcendental. Studies recorded in Russia as long ago as 1958 Melo-diya SLS 5040, two discs, 3.30) as well as Berman's first recording made in the West.

Towards the end "of last year he was allowed to visit West Berlin (plans, confirmed only at the last minute), and there Herbert von Karajan and Berlin Philharmonic were waiting to record with him the most popular of Russian concertos, Tchaikovsky's No. I in flat minor. The result, available this week (DG 2530 677), could, hardly do more to confirm even the most extravagant claims. It is Berman's achievement that Sydney Lassick and Television NANCY BANKS-SMITH Song for Europe RADIO TIMES may have inflamed expectations about A Song For Europe (BBC-1) by. running a feature which began, with one singer forgetting his trousers and ended with another thinking his had split.

Hopes of a new-look contest, all rock and bottom, must have been dashed last night. The winner was a song about saying bye-bye to. a baby: "Save all your kisses for me. Even though you're only It shtt-dld go er strong with a clean-living, child-loving vote and I (inly hope that vote is bigger I think it is. Usually this eliminating contest has all the charisma, of Nobbliest Nurse or Grandmother of 'the Month.

This year, by dint of brainpower and a bicycle pump, the BBC blew it up to fit the Albert Hall. It was remodelled on the Eurovision finals with a different singer for each song and juries voting around the country and Michael Aspel looking moFe than ever like a young man made-up to look middle-aged. I have collected a few lines from the competing songs. Put together they have, I would suggest, all the makings of a real winner. I call it "What the hell's a Carousel? It goes: Our love was deep in motion.

Everyone thought it was I'm stuck on you, you're stuck on me, I'm stuck on you, baby, Can't you see. a Carousel. on got to believe, my heart's on my me at the Carousel at eight although you're only three. Apart from my own' ehtry, the interval act froni the cast of Ipi Tombi made me wonder why this contest didn't mine the great wealth of black music in the country. However, among what Aspel, with that likeable irony, called Scenes of great emotion," Brian Controller of BBC-1, entered to a fanfare and a drum roll and said it was refreshing, and exciting and, on the shade of odds, he agreed with the consensus.

I must admit, it is not really my line at all so I asked my resident eight-year-old expert. She, to my concern, was watching ITV because, I was bored to deaf." Birmingham Rep MICHAEL BILLINCTON Events BALZAC once described himself as the secretary of French society and David Edgar seems to be aiming to fill the post over here. For his latest work, Events Following The Closure Of A Motor Cycle Factory, being staged at EDWARD GREENFIELD reviews new records Lazar Berman LAZAR BERMAN may have a name to suggest an American comedian rather than a Soviet pianist and he may look like a character from Fiddler on the Roof, but he is, so the publicity suggests, the greatest pianist in the world. How is it, one wonders, that Berman could have reached the age of before we in the West took notice The answer lies partly in the vagaries of Soviet bureaucracy, After all, Sviatpslav Ricltter didn't appear in the West until- he was in his forties, and even Emil Gilels, a year or so Canton Warrior by Michelle Jones-Hughes: Rochdale conceived as promotaple material which survives, if at all, on its intrinsic merit, but Stan Tracey's Under Milk Wood suite still retains its public connection with Dylan Thomas. With Donald Houston reading extracts from the poem and Tracey's quartet playing the music, this particular mix of words and music has reached a new and inspired level of integration.

Houston, of course, is by himself capable of bringing the poem to life; Traeey proved at the New London theatre that his group can illuminate the words When saxophonist Art Themen nogdled behind the verbal cadences of. the opening Starless And Bible Black and Tracey deftly accompanied the reminiscences of Polly Garter, the two disciplines were obviously interacting. Mostly, the themes and improvisations followed the extracts and one could only marvel as they enhanced the narration and at the same time offered superb and self-sufficient musical statements. No doubt Houston's performance demanded a virtuoso response, and' he go.t has settled Into the role once filled by Bobby Wellins. In one sense Wellins is.

irreplaceable; yet Themen now interprets the melodies in his own way being more versatile, adapts more readily to the moods and emotions aroused, by the spoken word. Manchester GERAIP LARNER Youth orchestra A YOUTH chamber orchestra is hot, you might think, a practical possibility. The problems are too great for young and inxperienced musicians to deal with. But at least after a five-day residential Course and coaching by the Aeolian Quartet the thirty members, of the North-west Youth Chamber Orchestra know what, the problems are. Moreover, as their concert in the Royal Northern College of Music indicated last night, they have learned how to solve some of them.

Presumably on the theory that the more problems there are the more more they will learn, Emanuel Hur-witz chose a programme which would have tested the most expert ensemble. But was it wise to ask his leader to play Bach's A minor Violin Concerto speed of recording, but the gains in spontaneity, are Not ope' of. the two dozen rival versions listed in the catalogue can now match this, in flair, command, and imagination. The Liszt set, too, fizzes with wit and energy, though I suspect hat it is not entirely typical of Berman in his latest form. What is clear all through is that Berman's technique, is so extraordinary he can simply take it for granted a.nd give his natural musical imagination full rein even in the hainraisingly difficult passages, It is worth remembering of course just what an impact Gilels's first appearances in.

the West made on audiences. His account of that same Tchaikcviky eopcerto with Rainer and the Chicago Cttohestra. remains' one of the most powerful on record, and the sound- on the latest bargain reissue is still acceptable (Camden Classics, ccv awe, 'Now eomes a reissue on the same of Gilels's. searingly dramatic account 'Of Brahms. Second "Concerto with the same con.

ductqr and. orchestra (CCV 5042), perhaps the most incisive, performance ever recorded yet warmly, passionate too. and, in the same half the concert, take first violin" solo parts in Handel's Concerto Grosso in minor and JJartok's Romanian Dances. At the other extreme, the wind players appeared only in Haydn's Trauer-symphonie (No. 44 in minor), where the parts are difficult and not very rewarding.

It could be that this symphony, like Mozart's quartet Diverti- mento in K.136, got in the programme because of Mr evident taste of 1he brhk and dynamic. However, the very efficient young leader, Andrew Price, survived his various ordeals remarkably well. The Mozart and Haydn works were indeed brisk and dynamic in interpretation. Obviously, there" were numerous dis crepancies in ensemble and Intonation, but the only movement which was really too difficult for theni was Haydn's major Perhaps this is why Mr Hurwitz likes them brisk and dynamic. But a small concession in tempo might have helped matters in like the fugal second movement of the Handel Concerto Grosso and the outer movements of the Bach Violin Concerto.

The one concession made was to reduce the numbers of the rlpienO at several points in the Bach, presumably to reduce the possible number of discrepancies. It was all very interesting, obviously worth and a S00a example of the enterprise pf the North-west Arts Association, which thought up and organised the whole thing. Rochdale MERETE BATES Michelle Selwyn Jones-Hughes FEW ARTISTS' careers can follow such extraordinarily close parallels' as those of Michelle and Selwyn Jones-Hughes, showing at Rochdale Art Gallery (until February 29). Both were born in North Wales, studied for their Pip AD in painting at' Liverpool, continued to an MA at the Royal College of Art followed by an The late "1950s was a vintage period for P.CA,- whose catalogue provides 'these Camden Classics at .1. The, Dewe Eclipse once in the same pnee-range, pow costs 1.50, but still provides, remarkable ya Me.

as In the reissue of the three discs of Chopin recorded by Wilhelm Kempff. As. with Berman clarity is the source of magic, where as in the QriSP accounts of the sonatas nos 3 and 3 (ECS 770) the results may sound a little epol. The second record: (ECS 768) includes characteristic versions of the. Andante Spianatp; Grande.

Polonaise Brillanta, as well as the Polonaise Fantaisle, but the "record I urgently recommend as a revelation-in i Chopin'playine ha the four Impromptus, the Nocturne No. 3, the No. 3 as well-as -the two separate pieces that sh.ojy-'Qhopintat his most' Berceuse and-, the Barcarolle. In each of them the pearly clarity of. the florid.

writing is On Ita special 'at on'y 1 ,49, RCA' has np nearly; Vladimir Horowitz collection. It may seem a waste having a Hcond hoven music and dates and sources spelt firmly out; it's nice to see the theatre rattling so successfully with neceessary fact Harrogate Theatre ANDREW VEITCH Joe Egg NO BAND, no vaudeville, just a straight account of an ordinary couple 'attempting to' cope with an impossible situation and sadly, undramatically, failing Stephen Barry's production of A Day in the Death of Joe Egg at Harrogate Theatre is calm, impressive, and very painful It's a sad comment on public taste that a company capable of producing such valuable theatre must rely on farce and touring trash to survive. Christopher Bostock as Brian and Annie Rice as Sheila show a rare commitment, One suspects they know the agony of spawning a vegetable. But of course what makes the play so moving is Peter Nichol's ability to externalise in this semiautobio-graphical situation; and it is the actors' ability to remain subtly detached, to venture to the very edge of the whirlpools of emotion and pull back, that makes their performances so true. The comedy is always effective Brian with his paintings of thalidomide-cowboys, his irrepressible, almost hysterical jesting Sheila, the would-be earth mother, with her flea-ridden cat called Beatrice Webb, convinced they'll survive even after Brian has failed her utterly What a daddy, aren't we lucky." Perhaps one could have wished for a little more realism from Anne Shepherd as Joe Egg, and a degree of belief from James Hennessey as the awful, honkin? mock-Socialist, but this play is an ajl-too-jare experience, for Harrogate one not to be missed.

Unless you're pregnant. New London RON AUP ATKINS Stan Tracey A PIECE OF MUSIC dedicated to a literary or pictorial subject Is often he forces conductor and prohestra Jnto an unaccustomed mould. Karajan and this Berlin Philharmonic, so -far- from sounding cpol and overpolished as they oftsn do on record, give a performance-as passionately committed as that of the soloist. I have rarely, if ever, heard this much-played work explode on record with such a feeling of- spontaneity. Even the DG engineers seem to have been influenced, for the sound is more aggressive than' is usual with the piano forwardly placed but with the orchestral detail still refined arid clear.

That sound quality suits Berman's interpretation, for the striking point about it is its clarity. Inner lines 'are revealed, and rhythms denned as though for the first time. In the scherzando middle section of the slqw movement. Berman plays with a lightness that is barely credible no heavy thrusting, just sparkling clarity. His tempi for all three movements arf; unexaggerated, but he uses the.

extra elbow room with consistent fantasy. Berman after all has no need to whip lip excitement; for everything he does compels attention. One or two minute blemishes are evidence of the i.Lmjj .11 ii ii.