The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 10

10 Thursday July 29 uaaonqna v- Jo Ms. v. M' -1 'Uiki jjji wafcAed 'by 1ofe fifoitf S. bedroom -Buti thsse, thoughfperfeetly are- not (its "point whicrj is simply that adults rareor-jive standards set topi them "by HiHreni 1 Ana wiat, grace -is Merely a. stat8of I' 'Ai'ClockvfortNyniph? (Bros, Plcpadijly, X) Xas- little it a'partiYrqm i iw splendid- title, though J.

could 'have given it my' sticky Itttfe blessings a piece of rott.ca if the censor jiot slaughtered 'ttiby some twelve do not 'inind a snip here ihii'thete, but this i. ridiculous: So 'siliyVdif f.eem, in fact, a ofvy to iee spts1 and I must, adjrut) that someyunderthresent-legaljtangle, peMec vsensibJe." After all. we ctnnpt, ahow '-ppoplej v. selves" inbed' ok fbeolfebut'Taised o'are of-'ughter is.wheteT.we Gd4 -the. Prophet M6hajr4nad saVe.us in 1977:.

AivtJiltte YOU WILL probaKy remember' these grand old biblical epics in "which Jesus appeared oSly.as a holy, shadow, or oust, possibly a beneficent hand. -Wen, -The Message (Plaza, ABCs. Ful-ham) and Bayswater, A), which tells the story of Mohammed over three long houis, goes one1 better than that. The veryinearest we get to" God's Messenger is the lugubrious head of the camel he rides. Even more disconcertingly, the camera becomes the' Prophet, with members of the cast addressing us as if we were he.

This is all because of the Islamic tradition which holds that the impersonation of the Prophet offends against the spirituality of his message. And for the same general reason the title of Moustapha Akkad's film has been hastily at a reported cost of 50,000, from Mohammed, Messenger of God. Even then, the tribulations of this 17 mrllion dollar film have not ended. From Cairo comes news of a ban throughout Islam because it has the audacity portray some of Mohammad's most honoured disciples, though we all know how seriously some Moslem states take edicts from Egypt. The film was made with two different casts, one Arabic, one English-speaking, and apparently the Arabic version proved more expensive not because of the salaries but simply because the actual words took longer to speak.

If the director said "Cut" in the same place, he'd have missed half the message. The version here stars Anthony Quiron as Hamza, Mohammed's warrior uncle. Irene Papas as Hind, wife of Bu-Sofyan, the Prophet's bitter adversary and a lot of other-only vaguely familiar faces. Unfamiliar' and, I'm afraid, undistinguished in the acting stakes. The film once again shows that the bigger you get logistically, the more you tend to lose artistically.

The few 1 exceptions prove the rule, and this isn't one of them. Not to put too fine a point on it, The Message ought to suit the medium of cinema far better than it does. What we actually get is fairly plodding characterisations (H. A. L.

Craig was the writer), a great many competent, rather than inspired, crowd and battle scenes (Jack Hildyard is the cinema-tograpiher) and a spelling out of the obvious that renders the film too long by more than the twenty minutes Mr Akkad feels could be cut for impatient Western audiences. It is certainly an honourable attempt to encompass the life and God-given teachings of a Prophet who seems very like a less pacifist Christ But it lacks either deMille's vulgar flair which would at least have given the eye more to boggle at, or the passion and commitment that might have driven its way deeper into the subject. Mr Akkad, whose first feature this ishas anyone ever made a more expensive and expansive debut? is workmanlike but no Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea renfotelv.like ihe'realShlng isissred the aoid in i my ohscenfe--, wa 0sar woul' hsve; i fit.fywd.to of us teen' Tetwal have, who first pouts atjdthea- flouts. Site spends 'living room "All p'retty daft "of uvuioc. tnii some of those frwnf the.ridipuldu's.rto.Me,ub:une the National -eatfe'ls -mouirting both ahy kind of iis: of the 'workVdf faults fed-''the dther' the-'superylater works of TasnJiro.

Oiu; AtgusiSly there are at least lpimasterjiiecesjinSthe, tivo 'seasons ul-more'-impornf'tjn 'tha, is the; general-, standard the- outft of great-' If -1-had io. recommend 'two. flims itom each of those they would he Hawks's'- Monkey Business (August .16) and' Rio' (August 19), andJOzu's'Late Spring (August 2) and' An Autumn: Afternoon-(August 18). But wherever you stick, the-fpin, you come up with something pfetty Mr John Freeman; ths'riew chairman of the Film Institute, "really ought to go along. He' might then gain the faith needed to run that extraordinary outfit.

Without faith, and infinite patience; he's lost. was no real no pointing of the riddles -for example. They -passed almost'uhnoticed. Rene Kollo. makes -a magnificent Siegfried, his voice finely, projected, penetrating and true- As i.the.earlier operas Zoltan Kelemen as Albench Heinz Zednik as Mime and Bengt Rundgren as Fafner were near-ideal, powerfully incisive, wth Donald Mclntyre.

more at- home cloaked up as the Wanderer than' as Wotan earlier. Gwyneth Jones's Brilnnhilde began, on, her old suspect hoots after that. Hanna Schwarz as Erda' -sang' even while'- wrapped -in ectoplasm and being manhandled by-Wotan, while Yoko Kawahara sang-, radiantly as the Woodbird but then she actually in that pigeon-ibasket Hammersmith ROBIN DENSELOW Weather Report FOR money is one "thing, but this extraordinary five-hour marathon must have left most of the exhausted survivors wondering if someone, some-' where had not gone a' bit too far. Of the three bands appearing (Weather Report, Shakti, and CobhamDuke, two were making their British debut, and any one could have packed the hall alone. "Jazz-Rocfc" is the tag this music is usually given, but though -many of the musicians had jazz roots there were plenty if other influences in the almost exclusively instrumental -sets.

Together, they provided a rare display of. one truly experimental side of contemporary music, where rock rhythms, jazz improvisation and freedom influences from -any part of the musical spectrum literally; electronics' to African 'chanting can be brought together, i with very different results. Weather Report came-on so late that -many of the audence were leaving-or dozing off, and they were forced to play, -a sadly short set. Even so, still'--. showed why they, are -the finest expo-'-nents of jazwwJk- fusions (with -th'-' possible- exception of the venerable Crusaders) playing Against-.

a constantly changing rhythmic back- ground of drama and every sort of percussion, Wayne Shorter's1 saxophones and Josef Zawinul's keyboards' and electronics took turns in pushing their bright, colourful playing through- a quite dazzling' variety of styles. At times the mood was that of an electronic African rain forest, then congas and chanting gave way to keyboards. Jazz-orientated solos-balanced curiously with anything frorii lilting South Seas-style melodies to' excellent base guitar solos, or a superb straight ballad with Zawinul accompanying Shorter on piano. The other two bands have sprung from the remains of that once-magni-'-ficent outfit the Mahavishnu' OrcheS-'. tra.

Guitarist John McLaughlin' has now decided to swop from fast electric guitar solos' to. even faster- acoustic' solos and has teamed' up with three Indian musicians, a band called own guitar sqlds and the yiolin work of Shankar, blended elements of i Rag with a jazz feel and were backed- by the clattering of tabla and ghatam-' (a large clay pieces were jiever allowed to develop quite as fully, as. they might and highly impressive they began to sound just slightly monotonous after an Mahavishnu's former drummer, BiHV" Cobttam, provided the only disappointment of the night Teamed up- with' keyboard player George arid ex-Weather Report bassist Alphons'6' Johnson; he-gave a 'display of perfect, technique without feeling. It Mke a drumming Olympics as he beat his way cleverly around the large kit, making no mistakes and inspiring no emotions. director of softicore awoitafionE jfex Pecas.

Irs about i i-ouDle-Dfho Kris Kristofferson nd Sarah Miles In The more. And his film remains obstinately without wings. I've never had a sailor." says Sarah Miles. I've never had a lady" replies Kris Kristofferson in The Sadlor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea (Carlton, X). You wouldn't' think from this exchange that the drama was based on a story by the sensitive YuMo-Mishima.

But in fact the film, which transports it to Douglas Slocombe's lyrically evoked English West country coast, tries hard to emulate the Japanese writer's atmospheric austerity. Miles is. a youngish widow with a 13-year-old son (Jonathan Eaha) whose empty and frustrated existence this first night the theatre does not have the resources to stage an acceptable production of Private Lives. The company did not look or speak or move like Elyot and Amanda would have done the sets were simply ghastly. It was what Coward would have called frowsy." But does every production of Private Lives have to live up to Coward's standards Wasn't this good enough for Chester? This is the irony.

A generation later, a lot of people will see this play because of that original production people who have come because Private Lives has gone into the folk memory as being an enjoyable evening concerned with the sort of people we would all like to be. The same audience -would have stayed away from a new play by an writer which this company might tave been able to handle better. Instead they came to see a- bad performance because it was a play by-No61 Coward and what can you do about that? RAH Radio 3 MEIRION BOWEN The Prom ONE HALF of this Prom all froth. Or that's how it turned out: for Samuel Barber's Violin concerto Here replaced an unfinished Prom commissi on Richard Meale's Piano Concerto that might have had greater substance to it. At the start was one of Britten's most ephemera! early pieces, Canadian Carnival.

Played with greater, zip and relish it could sound like a clever film' score, what with AJouette quoted rather cheekily at the climax. But the BBC Symphony Orchestra, under Edward Downes, read it through with one eye shut. Again lightweight but somewhat longer was the Barber Concerto and the soloist Ralph Holmes and orchestra reaKsed it with greater conviction. By turns bucolic and gently nostalgic, the work lacked the spark of real inventive interest. Only in the finale does it come to life witjx a combination of odd time signatures and moto perpetuo figurations.

After the interval came the real music Elgar's First Symphony, conducted by the greatest of British elder musical Sir Adrian Boult: Though sometimes Boult's age showed in that the orchestra had to keep themselves coordinated in complex passages by a lot of internal sub-conducting he showed himself still capable of tower-, ing interpretation. To my mind, he slightly glosses over the deeper, sentiments of the slow movement, but his approach did much to steer the symphony towards its true dramatic climax in the finale. Even Boult could not cover up the uncertainties in the development of the musical argument in the first movement: but the security, of Elgar's creative instincts in the middle movement, especially, was reflected in the orchestral brilliance and self-assurance here. Inevitably, but deservedly, the performance received an ovation Brighton jANET WATTS Stanley Spencer WILLIAM BLAKE saw heaven in a wild flower and began that hallowed and exclusive communion of English visionaries in which Stanley Spencer must surely given For Stanley Spencer saw heaven in the streets and fields and kitchens and back yards of his native Cookham, where the stolid Inhabitants were' interchangeable with angels. In his Prophet the new SHms reviewed Is bolstered an affair with the second officer of a tramp steamer that comes bowling in to the local harbour (Kristofferson).

The focus, however, is not so much on the lovers but on the child, a lonely spritepassionately interested in the.sea and ships, who has fallen under the domination of the doctor's son, given to dissecting live cats to find the pure and perfect order of life." When the sailor arrives, a man as fascinated 1 the sea as the boy, an admiring relationship develops. Which is disappointed when the sailor decides to exchanges mistresses by leaving the sea the lady. The -pure and perfect order of things has been fatally disturbed and the -boy, swayed by. the Stanley Spencer Self-portrait earliest work, as he said himself, "the drawing or the painting of the things was the experiencing 'of Heaven," and in the world of his art the very jam tins and rotting cabbages' disgorged by a Cookham rubbish bin could become holy offerings to the divinity of human love. For 20 years there has been no chance to see the range of Spencer's work, though interest in the painter some of it less than artistic has continued with the biographies published after his death (at the age of 68) in 1959.

The collection of SO paintings and 50 drawings now at Brighton makes a remarkable exhibition, comprehensive yet contained. The choice of works avoids an impression of conscious bodlerising, but escapes domination bp the lurid sexuality that burst out of the. biographies. Spencer was fascinated by walls arid fences and. the way one part of life could be cut off from another.

His-. Last Supper takes place in a setting of plain brick walls. Yet the essence of Spencer's realest and dearest world' his art is its freedom from barriers. "The first place an artist 'should find himself is in prison. The moment he realises he is a prisoner, he.

is an artist, and the. moment he is an artist, he starts to free himself," he once said. No barriers. In Spencer's world even the ultimate barrier and limit of life death vanishes, and the dead pop up out of their graves, push up the cold stones, disrupt the concrete pavements, to embrace the' living in cheerful reunion make love with the people who have come- to the cemetery to. mourn.

Sexuality and spirituality are equally undivided. Lnrelated though review by DERSK MALCOLM doctor's precocious fuhrer, plans a bloody revenge on the sailor who fell from grace. Such an elliptical story. Is difficult to ted! in film' terms unless you are very sure of yourself and your style, and Lewis John Carldno, a screenplay writer directing his first feature, shows two major weaknesses. The -first is that he can never make, up his mind whether to tell the through the child's eyes or those of.

the adults. The second is that he allows- too much licence to Slocombe, his admittedly excellent The internal logic of the piece Is often weakened by intrusive if" eloquent camerawork. the joys of innocence and religiousness and those 4 change and, sexual experience might seem, he wrote in 1940, "still I am convinced of their. 'ultimate union." His first sexual experience (aged- over 30) was a revelation of "a miracle I could perform," -and his life's scheme to show liberated sexuality as the path to salvation. Many of his visions and subjects have an undeniable courseness and brutality yet the best of them vibrate with a spirit that connects each part and detail in a single life a oneness.

The links the human and divine, the live and the dead, the animate, and the inanimate. There is as much life' in- a glistening saw carving a painting in half as there is in the workman who wields it. In The Nativity, the painting that won Spencer the Slade summer prize in 1912, 'a divinity breathes not only in the human elements the soberly garbed angel neighbours, the child sitting up in the crib, the couple facing each other but in the horse-chestnut candles and the latticed arbour; The Last Supper, the apostjes' presence moves as strongly in their feet under the table as- their Look af'the self-portrait of .1936, and see' Stanley Spencer look back from a world free" of barriers, vibrating with omnioresent loves. His gaze has a shocking lucidity, fixed, and bright as the electric light that glistens on his brow and neck, and irradiates his curly red ears; Sex-crazed maniac or holy genius? Stanlep Spencer's'' half-grin is itself a contradiction embodying yet questioning that taut dividing line. The eihibiiion is at Brifjhton 'Art Gallery until August 22; then in Glasgow, Leeds, and Cambridge.

Otherwise: this is a and. original-first effort, containing; a genuinely intense perfoamance from Miss Miles, who mixes sexual frustration, maternal concern and middle-class 'inhibition with real Unfortunately Kristofferson is not Jn the same, league (the' fitanmaker wanteU "-Robert Mitchum or Sterling Hayden, which would have been an entirely different kettle of salt water). The film has managed soine notoriety the Cannes directorate, in refusing it as a British 'entry 'dubbed it obscene," which js ludicrous. It however, have its erotica the' widow masturbating by. her the frank--ish bed scenes -with the- sailor, both Bayreurh Festival EDWARD GREENFIELD Siegfried A FOOTBALL referee's whistle -pierced the Wagnerian echoes in the Festsplelhaus during Act Tvo Siegfried (the first serious competition for the master in a hundred years), and; the enormity, seemed -no more disrespectful than the pathetic goings-on on stage, with- Patrice Chereau's now-ndtorious production of the Ring 'lurching from one ill-prepared effect to The whistle came aptly enough when Wagner's hero was cutting himself a.

reed and failing to male musical "noises with it. Siegfried could do no worse, then Mr Chereau did, I fear, for in that act his box of tricks did not even scenery, curtains, the, lot. Inexplicably he had-decided that, the forest round Fafner's cave (actually a sort of fruit orchard, flanking the gateway into a prosperous estate, obviously in the home counties) should, move about in a sort of Dunsinane wy. The trouble was that the trees were reluctant to budge, and the little men in cat suits deputed to push them around kept emerging into the open like unwanted woodsprites. But why move the trees anyway? The mercy was that the' costumes in this third Instalment of the Ring were effectively timeless, not identifiably Victorian, at all, and that made a fair difference to the sense of involvement in -an epic.

There was a traditional dragon as well, too traditional -like the one -which fights St George in a Punch and Judy show, wings flapping mechanically, nodding Coming from his home-counties estate, dragon -Fafner clearly represented wicked capitalism sitting on its gold, but if you intend that symbol at all seriously, why make the dragon such a object? Siegfried, did of course kill the dragon on schedule, but we didn't' actually see the thrust, what with so much dry-ice mist around. Then very effectively, (what I have always wanted to see 'iii-this opera) Fafner returned to his form as a giant before expiring, though even there Mr Chereau had-not thought it through, for the' original Fafner in Rheingold "was a two-man figure, and here he had lost his piggy-back, lower-half. I shall pass over lightly the towering steam-hammer in Act -One with whicji Siegfried forges his sword (no wonder he managed it when poor Mime had only an old-fashioned anvil no magic in that) and the fact that the Woodbird was in one of those -baskets they use for racing-pigeons. Siegfried did let the bird-out 'in the. end, but earlier it was impossible to believe that Wagner's bird-noises, gloriously carefree, came from an imprisoned object.

The magic had gone, and that, I suppose, sadly is what Mr Chereau has actually been trying to remove all week, debunking the cutting it down to size, Frenchman against German. The odd thing is that Patrice Chereau's sheer nlceness as -a person beams out in the brief, moments we see him, next to Pierre Boulez'ln the Human chain at the final Curtain seemingly not spoilt or just a bright intelligent lad. He takes no notice of the. hooting and catcalls, for on the whole' they are surprisingly Musically there were BoUlez's usual compensations in refined 'but fich and expressive playing from the orchestra, powerful but never damaging to the singers. Though he remains a- highly sympathetic Wagnerian, his Siegfried was not thought through in quite the way the first two operas were.

There Television NANCY BANKS-SMITH Bring on the Girls BRUCE FORSYTH is an artiste (rhyming, I think, with Far East) whom I would expect to survive gloriously if required to appear with a child protege and a performing seal. I saw with rare sympathy that in Bring On The Girls (Thames) he had both Lena Zavaroni and a performing seal. The seal, moreover was pure sadism on somebody's part as the song Be A Clown calls only for a duck. However, somebody at Thames had signed a seal so we got a seal and the line, "Jack you'll never lack if you can quack like a duck was altered to quack like a seal. Whereas as everybody knows seals bark.

At least they do in Thurber. You think I didn't like it. Fooled you. I thought it excellent of its kind. It was directed with invention by Keith Beckett, a bob or two had been spent on production and I have always admired Forsyth, the spindle which makes the whole show go round.

He is bossy. his eyes were further apart, he woirid look like a horse. As it is he looks like a horse in a cartoon. A bossy hoss (sic). He is quick on his feet with ad-libs, accepting passing catastrophies and incorporating them in the show like a juggler who starts with si balls and ends with six balls, a tomato and a passing cat.

He started with a song of the life is a cabareta carousela bowl of minestrone variety including the improbable line give me an old trombone and ended with a song of the smile through the grey skymonsoonforce nine gale variety with the come-again conclusion "brush away your troubles, Morning noon and night-As that's all right by me." Who writes things? Who torite them. Not Hills and Cryer who wrote the perfectly acceptable script including good sflsefcoh for Twiggy, Her sad Stan Laurel air they were better'n us' all went best with Forsyth's agitated verve. And he didn't play the piano though it appeared on stage at the end to frighten us. As Forsyth'6 ex-wufe said In one of the funniest comments made by ex-wives (and the competition is not peithaps, great) he didn't like my Irish stew and I didn't like his piano playing." Chester Gateway ROBIN THORNBER Private Lives THE FIRST NIGHT of Private Lives must 'have been one of those moments of acute delight from which everything which follows is a falling away. With.

Noel Coward playing Elyot lo Gertrude Lawrence's Amanda (and the young Olivier as Victor Prynne) to an upper middle-class audience who 6(hared their life-style with the author. The play must have seemed to be the quintessential expression of what an after-dinner show was all about. Shrewd, witty, entertaining, and elegantly put together, it said something quite perceptive about the difficulty of loving and living with the same person. The trouble with the performing arts is that you can go on falling away from that original exquisite moment for ever. How long would Coward (or Elyot Ohase Or Amanda?) have sat through Rhys McConnochie's production at the Chester Gateway? On the evidence of.