The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 8

1 ARTS GUARDIAN Saturday October 23 1976 8 STANLEY REYNOLDS 'We are all living under the shadow of the floating island of the crazed scientists and we all know it even though we do not like to admit Laputa is the science ruled floating island, all maniac professors and mad ideas. The' professors never come down to earth, or hardly ever; although their wives not being mad professors do come down for a bit of beastly Yahoo servicing. The super-scientific weaponry, used, for example, by the Americans in Vietnaw is pure Laputa. It was just the 'mad Dean's dream Laputa v-which" readers of Gul liver will whenever the king wanted a rebellion crushed. Gulliver has how become a children's book.

Laputa is, of course, not part of the children's version even as it is generally ignored by adults who read it. Sly pwn two littlest, boys, 5 and 6, were discussing it the other, day. Like all children they believe that Lilliput is the norm and that Gulliver was abnormal, a giant. Children identify with Lilliputians. I told them how.

Gulliver urinated on the palace to put a fire but and they thought that was grand stuff. But I warned them not to tell their teacher because she was who would try to blow the whole world up just to see if their latest trick worked. So pur American lady snoozed during Sir Alec Guinness's intellectual curiosity, while up and down the London theatre world the Yahoos delighted as they have been doing for some time now in the world of sex shows which reminds them of the magic power and weirdness of their' own bodies and imaginations. It is comfort, reassurance, they are seeking at Paul Raymond's latest, not cheap thrills. Good Lord Laputa is in the skies and may be called down to burn the hide right off us, leaving us with nought but our bones to dance about in.

If a play may be called healthy or the healthiest escapism in the theatre right now is where all the fullies are frontal and a man may indulge in an innocent wonder at the age old beast with two backs. Well, make that three or four backs. You know the sort of thing they are getting away with on the stage right now. probably too old to understand the grandness of The children liked the idea of such" a fearful being as a giant also having to answer a call, of nature. In a roundabout way there is a similar attraction for the audiences who rush to theatres to see Yahooish tricks on stage.

We are all living under, the shadow of the floating island of the crazed scientists and we all know it even though we do not. like to admit it; if we go about admitting to the truth of fearful things we will become mad as the mad Dean himself. Swift's floating island is too real. It is not cosy and safely millions of miles out in astro-time. It is shocking while Yahoos are not shocking.

Yahoos are, indeed, reassuring. Like the giant urinating. How cosy and comforting it is to become preoccupied; obsessed even, with normal bodily functions, keep our eyes glued to and our minds in the gutter when Laputa is hovering above us, blocking our view of the full of mad scientific magicians If the mad Dean returned to earth he would no doubt be amazed, at how his Yahoos have- taken, the theatre. Still, one cannot help wonder- ing at the The; Yahoo is man and therefore an everyday Why then should a display of his Yahooish-behaviour be such a theatrical vent We are. -now on the eve anniversary of the publication, of Gulliver's Travels, which came out on October 28 the title Travel Into Several Remote Nations of, the World by Lemuel Gulliver.

the mad, Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral Dublin came down from. Heaven he would indeed be driven even madder; at ever-increasing Yahooishness of his I think, he would be mizzled even more by' the triumph of his other and, I think, far greater invention, Laputa. Science had hardly, crawled from the cave of. witchcraft but with Laputa -Jonathan. Swift, the mad D.ean, had a most 'monstrous vision of today.

AT THE OPENING of Yahoo at the Queenjs the other evening at 8 o'clock an American woman apparently, and I say apparently because I was not there, said in a very loud voice as the play started, Hmmni, this sounds interesting" and then, my man who was seated in front of her says she promptly fell into, a noisy slumber, all sawing logs. The point here is not the ill manners of the American lady. Quite the contrary, it is her god sense. Why should anyone want to go to a theatre and see some highly academic theatrical representation of the inventor of the Yahoo wheh they could just as well walk around the corner to some other theatre and see any number of real Yahoos on stage doing real Yahooish things. I am speaking here, of course, of the beastly sex shows full of brutish nakedness and vulgar language.

I was going to list some of these plays but the list would have beert too long, there are so many of them. And they are the most successful shows. JUDGING BY THE SOUND Val Arnold-Forster's radio review El' Robot and Peter Fonda in Futureworld spot the difierence Yawnaimig space Derek Malcolm reviews more new films motive for mounting the season. But to deny by omission the highly individual merits of some of the films seems entirely negative. Not surprisingly, the box-office returns have been disappointing so far.

I note that Sir Michael Balcon, one of the initiators of the Production. Board, has now joined in the chorus of criticism of the BFI in this respect, and there is no doubt that it is' thoroughly deserved. The flowering of an alternative cinema which was beginning to take place under the lively Stewardship of Mamoun Hassan has. now been effectively squashed. And the new booklet from the BFI which discusses the Board's work doesn't make one feel any easier about the future.

It is quite clear that an appallingly authoritarian view the cinema pervades some sections of the Institute and it is quite typical of this that, although Juvenile Liaison is being given a showing during the present season, the controversial documentary about police work with juveniles in Lancashire will, in fact, not be able to be seen by members. The BFI itself has bought up the entire house and will only allow its own invited guests to attend. This is one of the most novel pieces of censorship I have come across. But it is only to be expected when the present head of production writes that, if he had been in charge of financing the film certain members of the Production Board would have spent half a day, perhaps more," with the filmmakers "actually going through the implications, the aesthetic, cultural, political, economic implications of their work." What would have to rise to the surface, he continues in order tq initiate or continue the production," would be some kind of awareness on the part of the film-makers of what the implications of the film were going to be. This, of course, implies at one stroke (a) that Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill, who made Juvenile Liaison, had none of that awareness, and (b) that unless certain members of the Production Board approve of what a film is trying to achieve aesthetically, politically or otherwise, it would not be allowed to be made.

Which is exactly the sort of freedom Russian and Eastern European film-makers have been struggling under for years. But worse is to come. I really think," he adds. that it is not sufficient for the judgment on which these (the Board's) decisions are made to be couched merely in terms of the talent of the applicant, the merits of his previous work, the quality of his script, etc." We've clearly reached 1984 a little ahead of time. BEARABLE science fiction movies are few and far between.

But Westworld, in which holiday-makers were invited to Delos, a technological miracle where robots aided tired businessmen to act out their fantasies in Romanworld, Mediaevalworld, or Westworld, was certainlv one of them. In that very original space age odyssey, Yul Brynner's robot gunman suddenly turned on the amateurs invited to challenge him for kicks. And he's there again, albeit briefly in Futureworld (ABC, Shaftesbury Avenue, A). This time it isn't the non-humans who revolt (the system has now been made fail-safe and reopened with an extra attraction for would-be astronauts). Instead, two investigating reporters (Peter Fonda and Blythe Danner) discover a plot to lure VIPs to Delos and then to replace them with robot doubles in order to control the world.

Some of the hardware is excellent there's even electronic chess, played with live pieces. But as sequels generally do, it fades badly. Words and ideas have no substitutes, even in movies which rely so much on thermal and colorisation sequences, digital image simulation, re-constructor images, and the rest. And it surely says something about Mr Fonda that he and his robot are absolutely intcrchangable. Richard Ileffron is the director.

Milton Moses Ginsberg's The Werewolf of Washington (Electric, X) is on the whole rather better fun, being the story of a White House Press Aide (Dean Stockwell) who suffers from lycanthropy. He gets that way after a visit to Hungary where he is sent to cool off after an affair with the President's daughter. The film is a cheerful, occasionally willy, but somewhat disorganised tribute to the old-style monster movies with a sharp nose for contemporary political satire. And since it was made before the Watergate affair's final act, Ginsberg can at least be given some credit for prescience. The frantic-cover-up that occurs whenever the full moon causes Mr Stockwell to sprout fangs at times looks much like life with the Nixons and occasional teasing inferences to real people generally add sauce to the dish.

Why the film, admittedly a cheapie, was never given a general release passes all understanding in the circumstances. But its situation is not as sad as that of Howard Zieif's Hollywood Cowboy, one of the very best comedies of last year, which disappeared from view all too soon despite much critical mileage. I'm glad to see the adventurous Screen on Islington Green is the aid of leg braces and crutches) and its effect on both of them. Part cinem'a-verite, part staged, the film has some awkward to say, 'since Regnier was eventually unable to stand the constant strain Dwoskin's handicap imposed upon her. Such a film is bound to have its uncomfortable, peephole aspects, but allowing for the mode in.

which it is made it says quite a lot about its suh-ject, even making the disturbing implication that the woman's failure to meet the demands made upon her renders her as hindered as him. Yet it has very little self-pity, and its account of what tolerance really means is not only frank and harrowing but also surprisingly tender. The National Film Theatre, girding Hs loins for next month's" huge London Film Festival, at which more than 80 features are to be shown, opens a briefer season of Brechtian cinema on Monday. As the programme states. Brecht's relations with the cinema were notably uneasy but he has had a profound influence just the same.

In dealing with the film industry," he once wrote. we act like someone who, after handing over his laundry to be washed in a puddle of mud, complains afterwards that it's dirty." Two of his favourite films are show ingthe 1932 Kuhle Wampe (Whither Germany) which stands the passage of time very well and, more surprisingly, Cavalcanti's 1955 comedy, Mr Puntilla and His Servant Matt (Monday and November 5 repectively). Also on the programme are Fritz Lang's crisp Hangmen Also Die, which Brecht disliked because of its massive oversimplification, and the Berwick Street Collective's The Night Cleaners, made in 1974. This may not be altogether Brech- tian but it is certainly an important example of unconventional agit-prop which illustrates the attempted politici-sation of women cleaners in London office blocks. It is also unique as one of the few British radical films which could never be shown on television since it actually presupposes that balance is not necessary in its presentation (November 13).

Meanwhile the British Film Institute's Production Board season continues, and I must say I have every sympathy with the group of filmmakers, including Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz and Jack Gold, who feel it is very poorly advertised by the dry and uncommitted programme notes. To discuss the nature of (the Production Board's) intervention into British film culture may be a worthy enough bringing it back into circulation for a week from Sunday on a programme which includes That's Entertainment II. Recommended. I'm also glad to report that the Other Cinema's first week in its new Charlotte Street cinema has been very encouraging Winstanley, the main attraction, took 500 from its first performances and -there was standing room only for Jane Fonda's personal appearance. One doubts whether there will be such large audiences for Steve Dwos-kin's Behindert (Hindered) which has the first of several performances on Monday.

Dwoskin, an American who has lived in England sinrr3 the early sixties, makes films like other people have dreams. He stares at his subjects, mostly women, with baleful intensity trying to find what lies behind their physical presence at moments of. emotional and sexual stress. His own attitude to them often seems both obsessive and ambivalent. Hindered, however, may be' more accessible to those with limited patience for this kind of avant garde film making.

It chronicles the relationship between himself and the German actress Carole Regnier, centring round his own physical disability (he' can move only with EARLY SUNDAY evenmg looks like a good time for radio to grab a few listeners back from TV. It is a time when BBC1 and 2 are concerned with minorities those who cannot read, or hear, or are interested in religion. Nowadays Radio 4 is offering You, The Jury, a series which on the evidence of the first two programmes sounds as if it will be almost as obsessive listening as its memorable predecessor in that slot. If You Think You've Got Problems. Which is saying quite something.

It is advertised as a series in which current contentious ideas are put on trial. Two call witnesses, cross-question those brought by their opponents and present their arguments all very briefly. The chairman, Dick Taverne, a QC of guaranteed moderate views, the stopwatch and attempts, a little hopelessly, to sum up the arguments. The jury is that part of the audience who happen to sit in chairs with voting buttons. The resemblance to a court of law is totally illusory if only because of the constraints of time.

But it makes sense to organise the three quarters of an hour in this rigidly formal fashion since the series, if it is to must use as many skilful polemic broadcasters as it can find. And one of the characteristics of a skilful polemic broadcaster is his ability to hog the air. In the first programme Brian Walden, a politician with an Andy Pandy voice and a "very un-Andy Pandy debating skill, proposed that a politician's private life should be of no concern to the public. He chose to argue that newspapers only interpret private! life to mean sex life. When, Mr Walden kept on inquiring, did you ever see a newspaper campaigning against a politician for underpaying his domestic servant An odd question for these days, surely.

I've read a great deal about politicians' hairstyles, holidays, houses, drinking habits, medical care, and where their children, or even their go to school. Mr Wajden, on the other hand, can only remember reading about his colleagues' sex lives. His opponent, John Selwyn Gummer, let him get away with his striking redefinition of what we mean by private life. Surely Dick Taverne 6r the producer should have tried to make them agree on what they were debating in the first place Particularly as otherwise the programmes show every sign of thoughtful, firm production. I enjoyed the historian who said that information about politicians' private lives should come from historians who can assess these matters subsequently and deal with the matter in a dispassionate way." In a b6ok, that is, read a long time afterwards by relatively few people who will, incidentally, contribute to the royalties of the dispassionate historian.

The second programme was on the indubitably contentious topic of education. Dr Rhodes Boyson proposed that parents should have a right to choose their child's school. He was aided by the headmaster of St Maryle-bone Grammar School, a lady from Friends of the Education Voucher Experiment in Representative Regions. And what sounded to me 'like an audience largely composed of educational pressure groups. Audience participation programmes are always liable to find that their audience consists not of open-minded representatives of the general public, but hoary veterans of the political battleground particularly if schooling is under discussion.

Dr Boyson presented the usual arguments for parental choice, dodging the sad fact that "parents may be either unable or unwilling to make a series of difficult assessments. Children's educational needs change drastically between the ages of 10 and 18, and schools, as his first witness rightly observed, can tart themselves up. Dr Boyson drew an unfortunate parallel between: universities and educational voucher system. It is after all 'universities that choose' their students, and I am sure that he would be the first to defend their right to do so. -His opponent, Bryan Dirvies, another ex-teacher MP, made much of the impossibility of every, parent having an equal opportunity to choose.

His witness, a headmaster too, pointed out the difference between choosing a school and choosing an education. Only too often the school which defends parental choice most vigorously is the one which confines the choice to a package deal like.it or lump it. However, this is not an attitude solely confined to schools which select their pupils and neither side was prepared to tackle the awkward problem of.how, in practice, a school.respohds to parental pressure. rest of the cast in those infant years of our national ballet. It was made to look quite easy by Marion Tait and David Ashmble, both of whom seem, to improve with--every TELEVISION Nancy Banks-Smith COVENT GARDEN Philip Hope-Wallace review performance but I like even more Sheila Styles in the Pas de Trois (with Brian Berrscher and Ian Owen) be.

IXIflPhPtn rausp. with her extreme vnurhfiilness I wtvl LI I Beasts and vivacity, she epitomises the: new attractiveness. of this company's, rank and file. To say that it was the rank and file which redeemed the performance of Pigeons would be a bit unfair: for Margaret Barbieri, though a bit miscast (too demure, not soubrette enough) as the young girl, danced beautifully in the final lyrical pas de deux, and Carl Myers was competent and likeable as her errant lover. yet each shows the most 'human and natural need for connection -with others.

In a beautifully arranged and articulated production by William Gas-kill and Max Stafford-Clark this impression is allowed to develop gradually. In an almost bare hall Peter Hunt's lighting tower is used to create arid focus our attention about the place as the speakers ebb and flow into our consciousness. Then we are allowed the larger view of their lives at home or in mental hospital, national assistance board centre and grim hostel those landmarks of loneliness and deprivation. MacGuinness, the extraordinary gypsy who prowled his way through Williams's writing so much is here with his morbid exuberance There are only two kinds of people, those who ought to be in prison and those who have been in prison." And he is matched by Jacobus van Dyn with his obsessive recollection of his phantom criminality a tiny curio of a man with his face a concoction of tattoos, his manner button-seizing, rather than button-holing. The fluid fashion in which these streams of consciousness flow into each other matches the meander-ings of these minds it is really too long and too emotionally repetitive for-90 minutes, but with an audience following the speakers about the hall and superlative performances from Tony Rohr and Philip McGough the -rarity and quality of the experience is sufficient.

WEMBLEY Robin Denselow update the story to the mid-19th cen; tury with Windsor full of Victorian with liveried flunkies and Fal-staff doing his first courting in an outsize lifeguard outfit that might have been bequeathed to him by Bertie, Prince of Wales. English is the language in a deft translation by the conductor of the evening, Leonard Hancock. But one result of this conjunction is that- the parallel with Gilbert and Sullivan becomes very clear, patter duets, double-rhymes and all. And once and is in mind, Nicolai and his innocent simplification of Shakespeare seem very German in a back-slapping, ho-ho-my-buck vein that at times recalls a Peter Ustinov Despite that, the music is a delight with Weber, Mendelssohn, Rossini1 and the comic Donizetti flipping here and there until that final scene clenches, the occasion with something rarely in-' dividual. Led by Michael Langdon as an orotund Falstaff (a full bass voice for Sir John an obvious asset of this opera) the cast had a familiar London look to it, with Catherine Wilson as Mistress Ford (her voice not helped by the bright acoustic) Anne Collins as Mistress Page.

Alan Opie as Ford and Sandra Dugdale as Ann Page. I MUST have been impressed by ATV's Beasts (Beast Of The Week Rats) for when after seeing it I was asked if I would also like a look at their lovable, animal puppet show, The Muppets, I take them away Aargh Eeek Of course, I'm not mad about puppets either. Barty's Party, so called from a vox-pop programme on the radio during the play, developed an excellont momentum with the rats getting closer, the tough husband cracking up and the nervous wife taking control which was like changing drivers in a runaway car. The husband was something in insurance and one only hopes he was adequately covered against marauding armies of man eating rats. Like the first episode, this Beasts was a feast of sound effects gnawing, scuttering and squeaking, not to mention four neighbours and- a courting couple in a car all being eaten alive and resenting it.

Meanwhile Elizabeth Sellars and Anthony Bate ran around like rats in a trap. It is my personal opinion that the rats were attracted to this particular house by the wife's partiality for pop programmes like Barty's Party. Improbable as this may seem, you remember how fond of music the rats were in Hamelin. Still the catchy, maddening thing, is that, if you accept the premise of an isolated house and a pack of carni-verous, poison resistant rats, I really cannot think of anything you can do or. anywhere you can hide for safety, except the freezer.

Which is cold comfort. OVER THE last sixteen years we have seen some good revivals of Verdi's difficult opera Macbeth in production at the Royal Opera. Shakespeare's play is a work of genius which works only in fits and starts. Verdi's operatic version sometimes blazes, often limps along in short dull town-Hall band routines. On paper, the present production should be (and will be) terrific, with huge Sherrill Milhes in the name part, a Mormon City full-back baritone, who looks splendid and bounces right through the Scottish Thane's touches' of remorse, without a cavil.

He is matched by the equally splendid Grace Bumbry who ranges about the stage, like a puma on the loose, flinging out arms and acute vocal thrusts in a voice not always beautiful but just the sort of style that Verdi himself would have wished. Edward Downes, to the rescue, drove it all along boldly. There were fair-to-splendid supporting parts. If Franco Tagliavini never quite got going as Macduff, we had consolation -in the robust Banquo of Robert Lloyd and people like Milla Andrew in a wimple and holding up: a tin goblet, to pass the tests. Bargain record ELLY AMBLING Recital including Mozart ExiiUate, Jubilate and arias and songs by Mozart, Mendelssohn, Schubert r.nd Wolf.

Philips 6833 105, 99 pence. In, the excellent Philips series of sampler disc's still: costing under, a pound, this is an- outstanding item. Ameling's pure soprano is beautifully caught, not least in the substantial Mozart cantata. EDWARD GREENFIELD WEXFORD FESTIVAL Edward Greenfield SADLER'S WELLS 'i James Kennedy- Merry Wives Peter Frampton IN- A BUSINESS already littered with best-selling phenomena, Peter Frampton can claim to be one of the few' spectacular successes of the. year.

After a full decade as a rock singer Frarap-. ton built himself a respectable, if small, reputation before deciding to push off to America to try to become famous. He succeeded, in extraordinary style, thanks to the success of one double album, Frampton, Comes Alive which gave value for money in terms of its price and length, and which was heavily promoted. record is now one of the 10 best-sellers of all time. It has sold more than .5 million copies.

On the strength of it Frampton has played to more than one million Americans; and grossed more than $50 millions. Statistics like, those meant it was almost inevitable that Framptonmania would return with him to Britain, and -that his first concert back home as a superstar would be sold out and lead to the sort of worship normally reserved for McCartney, Elton John. A star Mr Frampton certainly is, in terms of looks, personality and audience pontrol and whoever signs him to his first film will be investing his dollars wisely. I'm sorry to talk about him solely as a commercial proposition, rather than a musician, but that's the way hepame across. played, competently, -and sang' well; covering a safe, unremarkable range from 'acoustic guitar; ballads to proficient rock, with a variety, of his pleasant hits like, ShowMe.The Way.

thrQwn in; It was all -gently entertaining, thanks largely td Tils, personality, but covered little new sadly is want Royal Ballet FOR THE Musical world outside Germany The Merry Wives of Windsor by Nicolai is an overture and nothing more. Verdi's Falstaff effectively put paid to any chances that this, jolly, ensemble piece (only five solo arias against a dozen, very substantial duets and ensembles) would establish itself in the world' repertory. But as so of ten the Wexford Festival comes up with just sort of airing the piece not as electric in this first performance as no doubt it will be but already a delightful entertainmenti Anyone who looks forward to the catty 'ideasiof the overture popping is: in for a lyicolal reserves almost all of scene which," like. Windsor Forest. There yoU(rwinly havo an explosion lift- CONWAY HALL Nicholas de Jongh The Speakers THIS IS Joint Stock's version of Heath-cote Williams's bbokl He wrote about the, and impelling collection of Visionaries, and misfits whom he; found speaking at Speaker's "Williams, has, for.

time been THIS WAS an Ashton night at the Wells. The old master' was in the audience to see how the Royal Ballet's juniors got on with two works of his which made up the programme. Myjguess is that he would. have given honours to, 'all of them for Les Rendezvous, honour's to the Corps de Ballet for The: Two Pigeons, but, for the only-pass marks to principals. Itf the three; decades which separate the two.

works, Ashton's 'skill in developed Tp' Les vou6 the enduring, qualities 6f-fluent, marvellously musical classical inventiveness already Wtm this 4veMvoM' ballet' was arid were in it extraordinary, to think that ltsrcpifSiderabte; on technique were not' too much the THE PIANO THAT SETS THE STANDARD OF THE WOHLD fascinated byrfame he said Bosendorfer Pianos Limited 'eotewWftwrtitd Mother plain, a ppipt weU-taken with'Tlte Wexford forces; wnicn; 38 Wjmpre Street, London, W1 9DF Tel 01 -935 7378 It 'was fa'-bright'; idea in this directed "by, Patrick tibby To afc..