The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 21

ARTS, PERSONAL 21 Black Snow offers the theatre as a devastating metaphor for larger madness beyond, reports Michael Billington Lunacy in stages Father Di'Orio and his hip flask of holy potion THE GUARDIAN Saturday April 27 1991 ened to resign when the Mos HERE are no politics Hugh Hebert chines, maybe revenge is distantly in sight. Darshan Singh Bhuller's The Fall (10 10 on BBC2) was the first of another run of the valuable series that gives new directors 10 minutes to try their wings. They don't always fly, but this was a beautifully wrought dance drama about Celeste Dandeker, who was paralysed after a fall on stage when she was 22. In those 10 minutes it summed up an exhu-berant life stricken and in a moving sense restored to Dandeker by involving her again in this film in the art that had seemed to destroy her. Watching Mark James's Night Caller (Short Stories, C4) you begin to think something or someone in Camden is keeping its citizens awake.

About 100,000 insomniac Lon-donders are said to tune in to Clive Bull's through-the-night phone-in on LBC every Sunday morning between lam and 6am. There is Grace of Camden who, asked if she wouldn't rather be asleep in bed at 4.35am, says she gets enough sleep during the week. The phone-in is her way of relaxing after the week's work and looking after her son. There is Julie who is one of ing its travails, reminds me of another work written that year: Kafka's The Trial. There is exactly the same feeling of the impotent individual battling against a serpentine bureaucracy.

But, on stage, the hilarious scenes with Vassilevich inevitably take over. Robin Bailey plays the old monster brilliantly as a silky despot peering at life through gold-rimmed lorgnettes and emitting quiet groans at authorial intransigence. I have also seen nothing funnier this year than the scene where Vassilevich gets a hapless actor (Paul Mor-iarty) to demonstrate romantic passion by careering round the stage on a bicycle while giving his lover lecherous oeillades. I have, however, two reservations. The play panders, unwittingly, to an English Philistinism that believes all acting systems are rubbish: the audience actually cheers when Maksudov tells someone "You can't act if you could act you wouldn't need a method." The truth is, of course, that Stanislavski's system was based on sound technique luce oacKstage pontics; and Mikhail Bulgakov's novel Black Snow, written in 1936-37 but only published in 1965, is famous for its biliously funny portrait of Stan-islavski as a blinkered autocrat.

Out of this Keith Dewhurst has now fashioned a highly entertaining play at the Cottesloe whose only fault is its excessive fidelity to its source. Its hero, Maksudov, is a shyly obstinate writer who Is overcome with a kind of giddy delirium when he has a play accepted by Moscow's Independent Theatre (a thinly veiled version of the Moscow Art Theatre). He then finds himself manacled by an iron contract, drawn into a world of clashing egos and subject to the whims of the theatre's joint chief, Ivan Vassilevich (ie Stanislavksi). Not only does this bow-tied old tyrant demand massive rewrites: when he comes to the theatre, he takes six weeks to rehearse a single scene and ruins spontaneously good performances by the inflexible application of his famous Method. Unsurprisingly, Maksudov Is driven to despairing suicide.

Bulgakov's novel, set in 1925 when his play The White Guard was undergo- Battersea Arts Centre Betty Caplan Little Malcolm and Eunuchs DAVID Halliwell's Little Malcolm And His Struggle Against The Eunuchs apparently vied with Joe Orton's Loot as the best new play of 1966. Malcolm Scrawdyke, angry man 10 years on, has been thrown out of arts school and seeks revenge on his tutor. He co-opts three somewhat pusillanimous colleagues to join him in his venture and together they set up the highly improbable Party Of Dynamic Erection to carry them forward into the revolutionary era. This TJPJ ATHER Ralph Di'Orio ap- proacnes his hock with a JL. quiet determination and a hip flask full of holy potion.

He makes a damp sign of the cross on each preferred forehead, and the line of the halt and the lame fall backwards one by one like felled trees. They do not crumple or throw themselves awry, they go down eyes closed, straight and stiff, they fall backwards at attention, the way fainting guardsmen are supposed to black out on the sovereign's parade. The faith at work is not just that Somebody up there loves you, but that somebody back there will catch you. In other branches of the per forming arts, this might be called knocking 'em in the aisles, make the comparison not to mock, but because the first of a new series of Your Life In Their Hands (BBC2) is for the viewer really about the willingness to suspend disbelief, the prerequisite of faith and theatre. And in the year of Archbishop Carey, who is decrying theatre in the church? The series centres on unorthodox healing, and this one about, in the broad sense, spiritual healing has a properly sceptical commentary.

Stephen Rose's film has some notable footage of healers at work but it keeps questioning just how much of the effect is self-induced, how much is simply triggering the remission patients sometimes have anyway. Besides, the more dramatic treatments we watched were on conditions affecting movement, and this is the stuff of drama take up thy bed, throw away thy crutches without the certainty of lasting outcome that healing implies. And the sol emn American attempts to measure effects scientifically mostly felt like Heath Robinson going to work for NASA. Though I liked the Princeton man who sounded more like a robot than any professor of engineering deserves. He has an electronic machine that seems to respond, reluctantly and sometimes, to sheer human willpower.

For all of us with minds bent and ravaged by ma' Ron Cook's Maksudov has exactly the right look of a hunted, haunted stoat Tenor Clef Ronald Atkins James Williams AS musicians queue to learn about jazz, so the need grows for someone like James Williams to teach them. The Memphis-born pianist once worked with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers alongside Bobby Watson and Wynton Marsalis. Still in his thirties, he has moved on to produce records and to gain a reputation in the classroom for helping talent to emerge. Other musicians teach, of course, but Williams even turned his opening set at the Tenor Clef into a combined lecturedemonstration and history Yesterday's weather Obituary: Paul Brickhill cow Art Tneatre Repertory Committee blocked The White Guard. By sticking rigidly to the structure of the novel, Mr uewnurst also allows the play to peter out in anti-climax since we never know whether Maksudov's work reached the stage: a bit of imaginative rewriting Is called for here.

But William GaskUl's fleet production is well worth seeing for its portrait of backstage bitchery and institutional politics. Annie Smart also designs it intelligently so that we are reminded all evening of the overpowering presence of the Art Theatre's circular prose arch. Pitted against the suavely domineering Mr Bailey, Ron Cook's Maksudov has exactly the right look of a hunted, haunted stoat. And there is first-rate support from Gillian Barge as the fiercely protective secretary to Vassi-levich's unseen rival (Nemirovich-Danchenko) and from Elizabeth Bradley as the old man's aunt who greets Maksudov's announcement that he has written a play with the unanswerable line But why? Aren't there enough already?" Black snow may not ne tair; out it offers a devastating portrait of the theatre as a metaphor for the larger lunacy beyond. even the coldest bedsit nowadays and too intimidated by bleak employment prospects to indulge in idle fancies, the antics of these guys by comparison seem naive.

Similarly, the connection Halliwell draws between sexual and political impotence is a bit too glib. That said, he does nevertheless draw out the collective fantasy with considerable skill, and the five actors from Horseshoe Theatre Company under Graham Sinclair's direction bring the piece to life effectively. But the author needs to curb some of his own adolescent excesses and get the scissors to work, especially on the title, which leads you to expect Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs in drag. At Battersea Arts Centre until May 12 (details 071-223 2223). wing-back, clutching a glass of diet cola and smoking cartons of cigarettes, gazing out of the window.

His books, translated into scores of languages, lined a small bookcase. He had old friends and his family and went for walks, but he had shied away from the glare of publicity, even in the fifties when his fashion-model wife Margot Slater (from whom he later parted) worked for Norman Hartnell. When I asked to interview him he said it was only my Tiger Moth endorsement that allowed me through the door. Brickhill was a broken man who had passed his time in personal turmoil, but with great dignity. He told me about his breakdown: after the war, like many others, he had problems readjusting.

Finding the courage to climb on to a bus was hard a far cry from dusting himself off after his parachute dragged him through a minefield in Tunisia. In 1956, suffering from high blood pressure in Florence, he developed what he called "the which he attributed to medicationwith Reserpine. Rising from his chair, his face red, his knuckles white, and steadying himself, he said, "I'd have to go to the doctor for an intravenous injection of the stuff every second day just to hang on. For the next two years I couldn't get myself organised and when I began to come out of it. I discovered that I had entirely lost my easy conscience as a writer.

For 25 manuscripts, indelicacy in Aristophanes, and the barely-surviving Roman poet Gall us. But this is not the work by which he would wish to be remembered. John Griffith was Oxford's Public Orator from 1973 to his (semi) retirement in 1980, and this marked the achievement of a long-standing ambition. The main task of the Orator is to present those receiving honorary degrees, especially at the annual Encaenia: a task which is carried out in Latin. In 1985, Griffith published his Oratiunculae Oxonienses Selectae, the texts (with translations) of 64 (out of 89) presentation speeches.

The honorands included Dame Janet Baker, Sir John Betje- off tiHne wairttDinnie (hxeir the 70 or 80 women taxi drivers in the capital, and among the smaller number who ply the night streets. She stops at phone boxes between fares to join in. There is Charles of Camden, registered blind and in his eighties, always wearing a cravat and beret for the occasion, who calls in every week to chat and reminisce about his dead love and sing the golden oldies that remind him of her: What'll I do, I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles, When London Sleeps. As he sings, the camera watches Bull and his producer and assistant, lit islands in a dark studio, looking half embarrassed, half moved by the ritual; but knowing that if all night phone-ins are about anything, it is this comfort. Bull passes audience requests on to Jan who plays them on her electronic organ, and Ray holds the phone for her.

Michael of Stamford Hill is another regular, a greengrocer who sends a box of fruit in the middle of the night. Michael listens right through the show, and hours longer. He is recently divorced, and you wonder which is the cause and which the effect. Around Britain Report for the 24 hours ended 6pm yesterday: Sun- Temp shine Rain Weather hra In (day) 0 16 Sunny 2 14 Thndr pm 5 15 Shwr pm 0 12 Sunny 3 13 Sunny 6 16 Sunny 3 15 Sunny 4 11 Sunny 6 13 Sunny 3 13 Sunny 1 15 Sunny pm Birmingham Bristol Buxton i 1 Nottingham Ross-on-wya AST COAST Tynemouth 7 9 Sunny 7 10 Sunny 6 10 Sunny 7 10 Sunny 5 12 Sunny 6 12 Sunny 7 11 Sunny 6 11 Sunny 5 13 Sunny 6 12 Sunny 6 12 Sunny 5 13 Sunny 6 15 Sunny 6 14 Sunny 5 15 Sunny 4 15 Sunny 4 15 Sunny 5 13 Sunnv 5 14 Sunny 6 14 Sunnv 7 14 Sunnv 14 Sunnv 4 14 Sunnv 6 14 Sunnv 3 15 Sunny 5 15 Sunny 5 13 Sunnv Heme Bay SOUTH COAST Folkestone! Hastings Lltllehamptoo. Bognor Regis.

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From 6am to Bom vaster Mln i. From earn to spm yesterday: Max temp ISC (69F). Total period: sunshine 11.4hrs; rainfall, nil. and that Bulgakov's portrait of him is vindictively unfair: they may have quarrelled over Bulgakov's Moliere but the ora man actually tnreat- politic body has no place for women, needless to say, and the quartet falls apart as soon as it encounters resistance from the boys' anxious mums and Malcolm's own object of desire, Anne. Halliwell's tongue is pretty firmly lodged in his cheek most of the time: the bombastic language of student pretension is severely checked and the propensity for political enthusiasts of all types and ages to turn on one another long before the end is nigh is well observed.

Malcolm's own development as self-appointed autocrat is believable if somewhat predictable the wonder is what his more talented though sheepish mates hope to get out of following him. Things have moved on a touch since then, however, and the play comes across as rather dated. With students glad of with Conrad Norton) based on his prison-camp stories. It was suggested that one of them about the mass escape might merit a book of its own. The Great Escape was published in 1951, and later the same year The Dam Busters, the story of 617 Squadron and its various pinpoint bombing Apart from an anthology of PoW stories, Escape Or Die (1952), Brickhill's other main work was Reach For The Sky (1954), the story of Douglas Bader.

If his books now seem somewhat old-fashioned, they nevertheless remain concisely written, gripping narratives, and form a body of work that helped define some of the major sub-genres (PoWs, The Few, Bomber Command) of the popular historiography of the second world war. Revisionists might chip away at this solid if popular myth but Paul Brickhill helped pour the concrete. John Ellis David Langsam writes: For millions growing up in the fifties and sixties, Paul Bnckhul's three great books were the tales of heroic derring do. Under his spell, this writer played truant to meet Douglas Bader and later skipped classes to gain a pilot's licence. But Brickhill own story was not so romantic.

After the massive success of his books and their films, he retired to an apartment overlooking Sydney Harbour, where he was a virtual recluse sitting his would have wished for writing those learned books and articles which confer professorial chairs oan the living and a more or less lasting fame on the dead. Towards the end of his life, he produced his Fes-tinat Senex (An old man in a hurry). In the foreword, indeed, he refers to his "aversion to appearing in though this, I suspect, refers more to works "de longue haleine" than to articles, of which he produced a reasonable assortment. This is attested by the contents of Fes-tinat Senex, with pieces on subjects as diverse as the purpose of the Golden Triple Vessel from Vulchitrun in Bulgaria, Juvenal's Rhinoceros, non-stemmatic classification of born's parallel runs to keep us engrossed over several choruses. The piano-drums duet to round it off, a showcase for Mondesir's crisp brushwork on skins and cymbals, was a special treat.

Other highlights included the unaccompanied introduction and coda to But Beautiful, and a brace of typically hummable solos from Ind. The middle of the set did tend to sag, perhaps because a scratch team needs to graft more at the slower tempos. Williams, though, closed with style, rampaging through a heavy, two-handed incantation that evoked Abdullah Ibrahim or Keith Jarrett, but given an edge jagged enough to suggest unlikely links with bebop. James Williams is at the Tenor Clef, Hoxton Square, London Nl, until April 28. Another Day April 27.

1938: Ottoline's burial service. Oh dear, oh dear the lack of intensity; the waning and mumbling, the fumbling with bags; the shuffling; the vast brown mass of respectable old South Kensington ladies And then the hymns; and the clergyman with a bar of medals across his surplice: and the or ange and blue windows; and a toy Union Jack sticking from a cranny. What had all this got to do with Ottoline, or our feelings for her? Save that the address was to the point: a critical study, written presumably by Philip and delivered, very reasonably, by Mr Speaight the actor: a sober, and secular speech, which made one at least think of a human being, though the reference to her beautiful voice made one think of that queer nasal moan: however that was to the good in deflating immensities. So to Nessa where we recounted the story; and yet I'm left fumbling for a house I shan't go to. Odd how the sense of loss takes this quite private form: someone who won't read what I write.

No illu mination in Gower Street. An intimacy abolished. (A Mo ment's Liberty. The shorter diary of Virginui Woolf: Ho garth, 1990). Birthdays Today: Anouk Aimee, actress.

59; Pik Botha, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Information, South Africa, 59; Prof Muriel Bradbrook, former Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge, scholar of the Eliza bethan theatre, 82; Michael Fish, BBC weatherman, 47; Sir Peter Imbert, Commissioner, Metropolitan Police, 58; Conrad (Connie) Kay, jazz drummer. 64; Rt Rev Eric Kemp, Bishop of Chichester, 76; Jack Klugman, actor, 69; Igor Ols-trakh, violinist, 60; Alan Reynolds, painter, maker of reliefs, printmaker, 65; Tommy Smith, saxophonist, 24. Tomorrow: Ann-Margret, ac tress, 50; Ian Beer, headmaster, Harrow School, former Cambridge University and England rugby footballer, 60; Michael Brearley, psycho-analyst, former Middlesex and England cricket captain, 49; Odette Hallowes, GC, British special forces agent in France during the second world war, 79; Saddam Hussein, President of Iraq, 54; Kenneth Kaunda, President of Zambia, 67; Mr Justice Leonard, 65; Prof Vin cent Reddish, astronomer, 65; Debbie Rix, broadcaster, 35; Dr Jeffrey Tate, principal conductor, ECO and Royal Opera, 48; Garfield Weston, chairman, Associated British Foods and Fortnum and Mason, 64. lesson. Announcing all the tunes and telling us who wrote them was a case in point, since not everyone does this.

He also preceded the first number by setting a gentle vamp around which Peter Ind on bass and Mark Mondesir on drums eased themselves into a groove behind the pianist, a useful tip for anyone breaking in a rhythm section on the job. Once this had changed to Herbie Hancock's Dolphin Dance, Williams Uttered the treble with powerful chords, always with time to spare and showing he draws from a spread of influences broader than that of many contemporaries. His ability to relax at a pacy tempo was even more marked on a Charlie Parker blues, where the brittle single-note lines of Wynton Kelly merged with some of Phineas New major work in 30 years. It was not to be. We chatted about writing and flying and the interview, came to an end.

With a twitch of his moustache and a shake of his left index finger he bade farewell in best RAAF tradition: "Now mind, no line shooting, all right?" and went back to his chair by the window. Paul Chester Jerome Brickhill, born December 20, 1916; died April 23, 1991. excellent linguist, cheerful, hospitable, unselfish, ever willing to teach at the shortest notice, a master of the historical anecdote or reminiscence, John Griffith brings to mind those words once used by A.E. Hous-man of Arthur Piatt: "versatile without shallowness, accomplished without ostentation, a treasury of hidden knowledge yet what eludes description is not the excellence of his gifts but the singularity of his essential being, his utter unlikeness to any other creature in the world." Colin Uaeh John Griffith, born July 23, 1913; died April 7, 1991. I AUL Brickhill was an I lAustralian whose tales I fSof wartime heroics in Europe such as The Great Escape and The Dam Busters became all-time bestsellers.

Born in Melbourne, Brickhill's first job was as a journalist with the Sydney Sun. However, when war broke out in 1939, he joined up with the Royal Australian Air Force, was sent to Canada to train as a pilot and from there to England to join a fighter squadron. After some months with Fighter Command his squadron was sent to North Atrica. The squadron pushed west with the Desert Air Force into Tunisia but Brickhill was shot down in March 1943 and captured while attacking German defences along the Mareth Line. In prison camp in Germany, his greatest trial was acute boredom.

But he waged a two-pronged offensive against it: by helping organise escape attempts and by collecting stories from his fellow prisoners about their more hair-raising exploits. In 1944 those two activities came together when Brickhill helped organise the famous mass escape from Stalag Luft HI, in the aftermath of which 50 recaptured prisoners were executed After the war Brickhill resumed his career as a journalist, Orst in Europe, covering among other things the Nuremberg trials, then to New York and back to Sydney in 1948. By then he had already published Escape To Danger (1946, Around the world (Lunch-time reports) Ajacclo Algiers Amsterdam Athens Bahrain 'Barbados Barcelona Belgrade Berlin 'Bermuda Biarritz Birmingham Bombay Bordeaux 'Boston 13 55 13 55 13 55 19 66 33 91 29 84 13 55 15 59 7 45 25 77 a 46 11 52 32 90 11 52 16 61 12 54 13 55 12 54 22 72 22 72 22 72 12 54 16 61 16 64 14 57 7 45 16 61 23 73 22 72 11 52 15 59 13 55 15 59 13 55 17 63 11 52 17 63 14 57 12 54 28 82 13 55 12 54 14 57 13 55 22 72 London 'Los Angeles Luxemoourg Maono Majorca Malaga Malta Manchester Melbourne 'Miami 'Montreal Moscow Munich Nairobi Naples 'Nassau New Dolhl Newcaatle New York Nlco Oporto Oslo Paris Peking Perth (Aus) Prague Reykjavik Rhodes 'Rio de Jan Riyadh Rome Salzburg Seoul Slnoaoora Bristol Brussels Budapest Aires Cairo Cape Town Cardlrl Casablanca Chcaoo Cologne Copenhagen Corfu 'Dallas 'Oonver Dublin Dubrovnlk Edinburgh Faro Frankfurt Functitl Geneva Gibraltar Glasgow Helsinki Hong Kong Innsbruck Inverness Istanbul Jersey Jo'burg Karachi Larnaca Stockholm Strasbourg Sydney rangier Tel Aviv Tenerlfa Tokyo Tunis Valencia 'Vancouver Venice Vienna Warsaw 20 68 18 64 13 55 14 57 Las Palmes Washnoton Lisbon Wellington Zurich Locarno C. cloudy; Dr. drizzle; F.

fair; Fg, fog; H. hall; rain; SI, sleet; Sn, snow; sunny; Th, thunder. Previous aay a reaoingaj Sun and moon Today Tomorrow SUN RISES 0541 2016 0437 1915 SUN SETS- MOON SETS MOON RISES MOON; Full 28th SUN RISES- 0539 2018 0455 2029 SUN SETS-. MOON SETS- MOON: Full LlgMIng-up Today Ballast Birmingham 2049 2026 2026 2047 2016 2031 2033 2024 2051 2028 2028 2049 2018 2032 2035 2026 to 0553 to 0544 to 0549 to 0542 to 0539 to 0542 to 0534 10 0541 to 0551 to 0542 to 0547 to 0539 to 0537 to 0540 to 0532 to 0539 Glasgow London Bristol Mancnesier Newcasllu- Nottlngham Tomorrow Belfast- Birmingham Bristol Glasgow- Manchester- Newcastle- Nottingham- High tides Today London Bridge 0132 Dover 1102 Liverpool 1107 Avonmouth 0704 Hull 0615 Greenock 1210 Lelllv 0219 Dun Laoghalro 1132 6.9 1402 7.1 6.2 2318 6.4 9.0 2330 9.0 12.5 1929 12.6 6.9 1819 7.2 33 53 1440 5.4 4.0 2350 3.9 War-story writer Paul Brickhill, photographed in 1952 John Griffith: ad honorandam linguam Latinam orationes Oxonienses multos protulit years I couldn't even write a simple letter. Sometimes I would have a clear day but to structure a book and get down to it impossible." He sat by the window, a tired man, no words to say.

The war was long forgotten and there were no more stories to tell. In 1982 he had a new book on the way. All the research done and 80 per cent written, he said. Inspired by a poem in a quasi- Christian educational text, he was confident that he would find a publisher for his first man, Sir Osbert Lancaster, Lord Runcie, Anthony Powell, Mstislav Rostropovich and so on, all treated in Latin prose that managed to be pointed, witty, elegant, and clear, even when the honorand to be presented was, say, an expert in algebraic topology, the creator of a nuclear accelerator, or a textiles magnate. Here Griffith was in his element, with a guttering audience to hear his sparkling Latin, in which equally elegant verse makes frequent appearances.

It may be that, even at Oxford, there will be no future for the composition of Latin prose; if that proves to be the case, Griffith's Oratiunculae will be a worthy memorial An 7.0 1442 7.1 6.3 2355 6.5 9.1 12.7 2007 12.8 7.1 1857 7.3 3.2 1254 3.3 5.3 1518 5.5 4.0 JOHN Griffith, who has died aged 77, was the son of a mathematics don, educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, and spent his working life at Jesus College, Oxford as a classical scholar and tutor equally at home in Greek or Latin. Yet it would be difficult to imagine anyone less like the conventional image such a background conjures. Small of stature, with a large domelike head and alertly questing eyes, he seemed forever on the move, usually on a bicycle. John Griffith's inexhaustible interest in his subject (and those of others), his pupils, his college, Oxford and Oxonians, the world of scholarship, left him less time than others Tomorrow London Bridge 0217 Dover 1138 Liverpool 1147 Avonmouth 0748 Hull 0650 Greenock 0052 Lelth 0258 Dun Uoghaira 1210 London raarilnaa From 6pm Thursday to 6am yesterday. Mln lamp 6c (43F).

From 0am to 6pm yesterday: Max temp 16C (61F). Total period: eurmhlne, Ann. rniniaiii mi. Woathor Forecast, pas 24.