The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 26

WW 181)1 i 1 ll I MICHAEL BILUNGTON finds Pinter's mysteries decoded in The Birthday Party at the Lyttelton Party power Good golly, it's Saturday night by avoiding all trace of the stereotypical Jewish uncle fig wonderfully promiscuous with Orbison's music all luscious longing in a thoroughly ab A 1 I runic rai pi Meg, the indecently maternal landlady, is terrorised by Stanley who plays on her nightmares of being carted off in a van. Stanley himself is physically menaced by the darkly violent and obsessive McCann who is himself in thrall to the nervously jovial Goldberg. And as this production makes clearer than any I have seen Goldberg himself is sweatingly terrified of whoever his masters may be. It is rather as if the medieval chain of being had suddenly appeared in Eastbourne or Worthing, proving ure. At first, I thought dangerously so.

But gradually you realise the point of the stiff gestures, the manic neatness, the hands that even when pawing the obliging Lulu's body have a strange surgical detachment. This is a man whose key philosophy is "Follow the line, the 1 line, McCann, and you can't go wrong." And what Peck gives us is a stultified organisation man whose synthetic past and interrogative manner mask a pure and absolute terror. The wages of conformity. Peck cunningly suggests, is insecurity: My only cavil is that Dora Bryan, for all her comic skill, is encouraged to play the land- lady, Meg, as a Dickensian slattern in draggled stockings and pumps: I see the character as menacingly voluptuous. But there is ironclad support from Nicholas Woodeson, as a stubby, balding McCann who clearly uses the organisation to legitimise his violence; from Emma Amos as a gauchely se ductive Lulu with a Peg's Paper notion ot morality; ana tram Trevor Peacock as a humane but politically impotent Petey.

And Tom Piper's illuminating set reminds us that this one seaside boarding-house is surrounded by the winking lights of myriad others. In the end, that is precisely what makes The Birthday Party such a great, disturbing play: the sug gestion that the power play Pin ter so graphically depicts is an infinitely extendable metaphor for domestic, social and political relationships the world In rep at the Lyttelton, National Theatre, London SE1 (box-office 071-928 2252). lorry. I got the loan from the bank for 2,500 and, after crashing, I half expected I wouldn't have to pay it back." I heard myself chuckle. It was, you might say, a crash course in love and money.

Unforgettable (BBC 2) was supposed to teach us how to remember names and faces. Greg Proops, the presenter, is reasonably well known from Whose Line Is it Anyway? but not one security guard, solidly-set Yorkshircmen with flourishing moustaches, recognised him when he burst unannounced into their lecture. A more thin-skinned comic would have sulked. Ask not if you are famous. Ask if you are famous in Pcnwortham.

A fleeting appearance by Sir Thomas Beecham a woman called Vanda or Panda or something said we should remember him by thinking of a beach and a ham reminded me of an incident in Fortnum Mason. Beecham saw a weather-beaten woman waving to him cheerfully from the custard creams Sir and, as we all do, he took the line of infinite caution. What a delightful surprise! And how was she keeping? She was tickety-boo. And the family? They were tickety-boo too. Except, of Goldberg (light) and Nicholas Woodeson as McCann Henrietta butler RADIO 4's Saturday Night Theatre has always been the Jeffrey Archer of radio drama it's Brian Rix, Agatha Chris- ue and Catherine Cookson too.

Traditionally the slot was home to stagey, popular genre plays, at its 1950s peak netting audiences of over six million. Over the past few years Sat urday Night Theatre (SNT) has changed. The productions are grittier, more muscular and the plays, while still accessible, assume a greater sophistication in the audience and don't invariably supply a map. snt's current rock n'roll sea son, All Shook Up, consists of five plays about pioneers in popular music. Last week, in Neil McKay's excellent Take The Night, it tackled Roy Orbi-son, the plangent, quiffed and black-shirted baUadeer whose life was pitted with To survive.

Urbison adopted the only strategy available to him: he sang about it. As an ex-schoolmate put it, "You made disappointment into poetry. Koy." McKay took as his axis the uncommunicative relationship Between urDison and his only surviving son, Wesley, all silted up with disappointment about his father. The play could easily have lapsed into melodrama even the titles of Orbison's songs (eg Your Baby Doesn't Love You Anymore) were soapy or pop psychology. But McKay crafted something defter, both in its content Wesley accuses Roy of sweetening pain and excising anger in his work, fashioning anthems for victims and in its struc ture.

The play slipped easily between past and present, and McKay gave a friend who had committed suicide the role of Orbison's conscience, supplying a whispered, drawled reproach a Greek chorus transposed to Texas, and supplemented every now and then by similarly unforgiving contributions from Claudette and Wesley. Producer Andy Jordan drew a splendid pair ol central periormanccs trom Kerry Shale as Orbison and Marcus D'Amico as Wesley, and was COMEDY Sinderella Cambridge Theatre William Cook OR CHILDREN over 18 only, chortles the disclaimer on the poster. It's a fair reflection of the finite appeal of this out-of-season adult pantomime written, directed by and starring stand-up comedy's answer to Alex Higgins, Jim Davidson. Punters salivating at the prospect of unadulterated filth will be sorely disappointed. Despite its puntitiUatiiig title, Sinderella is pretty tame.

In fact, were it not for some single entendres and a few fake phalluses, it'd be more or less indistinguishable from any commercial panto. The aerobic choreography is, if anything, slightly less salacious than in several "family" pantomimes I've seen. Davidson must be one of the oldest Buttons in the business, and his co-stars seem even older. Rather than a page-three-girl-cum-actress as Sbiders, we get Dianne Lee of early seventies warblers Peters Lee. Jess ALAN RUSBRIDGER on a voice as near perfection as one could hope for Just Jessye But if it must be, it must be.

Thirty minutes is plenty enough to wallow in. She performed two late works. The first half saw her brine sorbing production. Lindsay Clarke's Cathal Of The Woods couldn't have been more different. The first radio play by an award-winning young novelist, it told the story of a pious young Druid monk who, under the influence of a sensual woman, rejects Chris tianity ana is sentenced to death by being immured in a hollow oak tree without food or drink.

But the spirits of the trees come to his aid, transforming him into one of them, and the play ends with a celebration of the Green World. The start and finish of Clarke's play were seductively elusive, hinting at arcane old myths swirled about with lovely music by Martin Allcock and Simon Nicol (of Fairport Convention). The problem was the middle. Dramatists trying to depict antique times almost invariably reach for a kind of wooden Bibttcalese, which in turn induces in actors a frightful declamatory style. This marred what was a surprisingly enveloping play, one which (in Nigel Bryant's production) left a lingering aftereffect, rather in the way that myth does.

Radio 5's first-rate three-part drama. Bully by Yvonne Cop-pard, dramatised by Jane Thornton, is part of the BBC's six month anti-bullying initiative. Prize-winning young gymnast Kerry injures her leg in a car crash, thereafter proving an easy victim for bullies in her new school. But discovering that the father of her chief tor-menter is imprisoned for robbing old ladies, she blackmails the boy back the bullied becoming the hullier. The serial ends this morning with a conclusion not all educationalists would endorse but one dramatically and humanly satisfying nonetheless.

Bully is not only exciting, but also serves to show the shifting balance of power among schooolchildren. The series is part of a whole canon of new' plays and readings about school ushered onto the airwaves by Radio 5: never has the instutition been subjected to such extensive dramatic scrutiny, from the child's point of view. The network's death will leave a gaping hole. Conrad (Prince Charming) won the NME poll for most popular singer in 1961. Only the vertically challenged Charlie Drake makes an asset of his age stealing what show there is as Baron Hard-On.

Sinderella would be bereft of critical interest were it not for the involvement of Davidson, the true-blue Forces Favourite whom sushi-socialists love to loathe. "Nick-Nick" presents a problem for liberal students of humour because, despite his tedious and sporadically offensive material, his delivery is the most deliriously frothy that I've ever heard. His puerile script is predictably bog-standard but his ad-libs are sublime. "How was the allotment?" he asked a dishevelled latecomer. Indeed, Davidson appears to be performing a discreet ideological U-turn.

He snipes at the monarchy and the Tories, the racial stereotypes that once epitomised his act are relatively sparsely spread, and his drink and divorce confessions are surprisingly endearing. If he only had the sense to hire an alternative comic to write him some decent gags, he'd put Ben Elton in the shade. Thev've more in I common than meets the eye. POP Loop GuruTransglobal Underground Astoria 2, London Alix Sharkey BOTH these bands have had the dubious praise of the music press lavished upon them in recent months, so it was hardly surprising that the night was a sell-out. Loon Guru construct music from exotic samples, wordless vocal refrains, jazzy chords and earthy, live drumming.

Anything, from the chanting of RT is long," wrote Ran dall Jarrell, "and critics are the in sects of a day." An unflattering image, but highly applicable to Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party, which 36 years ago was slammed by all the scribes, save Hobson, and now turns up at the Lyttelton in a superbly crafted production by Sam Mendcs that confirms its status as a modern classic. Part of its endless fascination lies in its elusiveness. What we actually see is clear enough: Stanley, a truculent recluse living in a seaside boarding-house, is reduced to a state of terrorised catatonia by Goldberg and McCann, two agents of an undefined organisation. But, as with any poetic metaphor, its final -meaning is up to us. I see it partly as a personal play about the pressures on the obstinate artist to conform to society's rules 10 years earlier, of course, Pinter himself had been a conscientious objector and partly as a directly political play about the arbitrariness of state power.

Reading the programme's list of productions, it's intriguing to guess at its impact in Johannesburg, Ankara, Warsaw or Prague. What emerges from Mendes's fine production is the idea of life itself as an endless chain of dominance and terror. This version starts, in a mood of deceptive sunnincss, with a jaunty Housewives Choice-type jingle as Tom Piper's seaside living room set is trucked forwards. But, after the initial comedy of breakfast-time banalities, we come to realise that Pinter is displaying a microcos-mic world in which everyone is linked by bonds of fear. Driven to Nancy Banks-Smith I MAY be the only living soul who has failed the driving test twice without getting into the car.

Luckily Nicholas Barker's From A To Tales Of Modern Motoring (BBC 2) only uses the car to get to his-destinationrthedriver; Itls Uke peeling shrimps; Inside each hard shell is a warm, pink, vulnerable creature. It Gets You Out The House, the first programme of five, was about being young. "We're just mad. We're just lethal. We've got everything.

We've got music, we've got food and we've got laughter." Did you ever hear a better definition of youth than that? It opened up one of the great cliches of television, the camera in the passenger seat. The young drivers were in motion like a movie. At home then-parents sat immobile on a sofa like a still life. rtwi'ii i ifWii ISO) "A 0 W4 Tower of terror Bob Peck as course, her brother was working far too hard as usual. "Still in the same job?" asked Sir Thomas.

"Yes, still king" said Princess Victoria. Then there's the star who saw a face he almost recognised at a Hollywood premiere. Fantastic to see him again! They must have lunch together very soon. "For God's sake" said the face tetchily "I'm your dentist." I've forgotten the name of the star. All our Songs For Europe (BBC I) this year were uncommonly gloomy, not to say on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

The waiflike Frances. Ruffelle, who seems to De nneted, Jlows over the furniture. She wears a nightie, trainers and a hungry look. There was a song about the weather rain goes on and on and one about lost love feel a heartache burning in my a comparatively cheerful one you cry, don't you cry, don't you and one called Slowboat which seemed to be sinking. I couldn't catch the words of Lonely Symphony at all.

"Why," I asked my son, "is it called Lonely Symphony?" "Because no bugger's going to listen to it," he said. Perhaps it all matches the mood of the country only too well. What emerges is Use idea of life as an endless chain of terror and dominance that each of us exists, simultaneously, in a state of bullying dominance and cowering subservience. It is all there in Pinter's play but the production articulates it with stunning clarity. For a start, Anton Lesser's Stanley is not simply some spineless victim but exactly like Josef in The Trial a figure compounded of arrogance, paranoia and unspoken guilt.

Snarling, furtive and unshaven, Lesser visibly enjoys making Meg's skin crawl. It is a startlingly unsentimental portrait of the nonconformist outsider. And Lessor's bottled rage and violence only makes his final transformation into a mute, black-suited insider all the more shocking. Bob Peck redefines Goldberg drive 'Dad's a totally different per son to me. For instance, he's a teacher, he votes Labour and he stays in at night and watches documentaries," said Chris, who was in a documen tary.

Dad didn't want him to buy that little, orange Volkswagen Beetle but Chris was in love. "It was one of the most amazing days of my life. Everybody looking at it I had a really, really good time. Just driving round with the stereo on-full-blastrlt-wasjust-totallyr totally brilliant" Then the seat fell through the floor. "I took it in and they looked underneath and they were just laughing.

I look back on my Beetle as part of my life that went wrong but, while it did last, it was really good and I'll never forget that first car." Carl's first car was a blue Fiesta. "At the time I had a Jason Donovan kind of hairstyle which was an absolute nightmare to kind of set and comb when I was in the car. I was trying to do my hair and put my spot cream on when all of a sudden I realised I had just gone straight into the back of a I'M i iwi i annsfflvus woe all her intense dramatic gifts to Britten sparse fragment of Lowell's version of Phaedra, opus 93. In the second half she sane the closing scene from Strauss's Capric-cio with more warmth, but no less intensity. We need not waste much time on that famous voice: it is as near perfection as one could hope for.

Lesser voices are easier to describe. They display weaknesses at one end or other of the register. There are hints of strain, dif ficulties over intonation, worries about dynamic control. They relax into the more demanding notes only once they are sure they are Home ana dry. They are un- dramatic: they are too dra matic.

None ot tnis is true ot Jessye Norman. Perhaps it is enough to leave it at that. For tne rest the orchestra gave us a good, lush, noisy account of Strauss's Don Juan (a bit too noisy, trom bones). And a Four Sea Inter ludes in which Davis deftly evoked the calm, the bluster, the menace and the fury of the Suffolk coastland. The balance was not always as it might have been, but It did sound fresh and passionate, Jessye Norman sings the same programme on March 21.

ONLY one complaint about this Jessye Norman festival at the Barbican: not enough Jessye Norman. It's not every day that she passes, through London. Indeed her itinerary, as vouchsafed in the programme, sug gests if is rare for her to spend more than one night in the same continent. So, when you've got her all to yourself in one town for a whole week it seems a pity not to hear more of her. Out of 100 minutes of music with Sir Colin Davis and the LSO she sings for perhaps 30, if that.

At the end the audience brought her back for five curtain calls in the hope she might weaken and sing just the merest encore. No such luck. In the words of Robert Lowell, which she sang in the first half: "My time's too short, your highness." SaseM PhilharmoniA ORCHESTRA MUSIC OF TODAY SERIES Artistic Director; James MacMillan fe.i luring members of the Philharmonia Orchestra SATURDAY 26 MARCH AT 6.00PM Nicholas Kok conductor Eileen Hulse soprano Premieres of works by five composition students, embodying the spirit of Beethoven's 'Ninth' in a modem view of the human condition. A fascinating prelude to the 7.30pm performance by Giulini and the Philhannouia Orchestra. BBS SATURDAY 9 APRIL AT 6.00HM The Motorola Festival of American Music Baker Divertissement Hartke Oh Them Rats Is Mean In My Kitchen Daugherty Dead Elvis Precedes the Philhannouia Orchestra's 7.30pm performance (Ives, Glass Gershwin) Nm.iiMii.iim.i.m.i Buddhist monks to Stravinsky's spikey chromatics, is grist to their mill.

Their music is seamlessly pan-cultural. Their set erupted with the maelstrom of Hope and built from there, a sense of dynamics and intensity growing with each number. Halfway through, singer Nidahl gave way to exiled Iranian vocalist Sussan Deheim, in from New York especially for this show. She displayed a breathtaking range over house rhythms that never lost their human feel. Transglobal Underground's set is song-based, built around the extraordinary vocal talents of Natacha Atla.

Their hit potential was apparent from the crowd response to Templchead, last year's anthemic single. Expect a rush of clone bands this summer, as record companies fall over themselves to cash in on the melodic invention of this post-rave, multi-ethnic dance music. Royal Festival Hall All seats .50 (unreserved) Entrance free for ticket holders to 7.30pm performance Box Office 071 928 8800 Registered Charily..