The Daily Telegraph from London, Greater London, England • 13

The Daily Telegraph Friday June 22 1984 13' THE ARTS Oriental fiums Solution sought to the French riddle of 1542 Living with terror OVER THE PAST 15 years television has regularly dinned into The Return of Martin Guerre (15) Curzon Angelo My Love (15) Classic Tottenham Ct Rd Running Brave (PG) Classic Haymarket Angel (18) Studio Oxford St Patu! (PG) Phoenix West Finchley Sans Soleil ICA THE FRENCH cinema appears very various these days After Yet along comes a pedestrian American version of an exactly comparable situation in Everett's Running Brave which also has a basis in fact For the Jewish Harold Abrahams we have the half-Indian Bobby Benson who finds the atmosphere at the University of Kansas unfriendly Only when he joins the Marines does he find the support that gives him victory in the 10000 metres at the Tokyo Olympic Games of 1964 Nothing in this uninspired account raises the spirits but my eyebrows very much went up on hearing the Kansas coach (Pat Hingle) advise Benson alwavs to run at the front to win long distance races The young actor Bobby Benson gives a likeable account of Billy Mills only the script gives little support in the way of characters or incident AT THE centre of Robert O'Neil's Angel is the 35-year-old Molly Stewart who is keeping herself at an expensive private school where she has a modern cops-and-robbers piece in La Balance" and an enigmatic study of contempor ary adolescence in To Our Loves last week we now go rfwr 'VmWniflfmWmmWiimM HR mu Bk Vy'fyZ'vQfcv 'mmxSSBuSSmmti'm RE' ''mM 9 Jlsiiiil 11113s m1 I -v with a reflection along similar lines: We think a Manchester United match must be terrifying and we wouldn't go to one That's how other people think of Northern Ireland" All the same Jane Oliver's well meaning film could not avoid the desperation beneath the surface the almost frenzied recourse to drinking and discos in the face of daily despair And if as the articulate club comic claimed the cleavagfe between Protestants and Catholics is a media-inspired myth" it's one that most people mistake for reality On this side of the Irish Sea some of our problems may be the more insiduous for being hidden from the majority Like heroin addiction Linda McDougall producer of last night's TV Eye (I TV) sent her camera crew to look at the situation after one of her own daughters reported heroin traffic in a local canteen Thjjy chose Rochdale but said "TV Eye's reporter Peter Gill it could have been anywhere" In this outwardly respectable Northern town plagued by unr employment and teenaege boredom the programme's 23-year-old undercover researcher Richard Bierman discovered how fatefully easy it is to obtain heroin in £5 and £10 sachets or in quantities up to several ounces and worth many thousands of pounds back 400 years to the mid-16th century for The Return of Martin Guerre from a director new to me Daniel Vigne Medieval times are notori ously difficult to catch with any us that (a) Northern Ireland is a grim and tragic place whose woes demand ever wider exposure on the box and (b) behind the bombs and bloodshed lies a serene every-day reality whose problems have been greatly exaggerated by the media (ie television) There are it must be admitted not too many messages of the second kind around Open Space (B 2) the C's Community Programme" unit had a brave shot last night at persuading us that living with daily terrorism was probably no worse than living with death on the road It's a charming city the people have smiles on their faces declared a passing American tourist An Irish couple compared the Province favourably with Florida Another Belfast inhabitant noted that when English people living in Ulster reach retirement they don't go back to the mainland" Open Space visited the clubs where comics make light of the Troubles and some of the amateur turns probably make the Troubles seem less terrible by comparison There was much reference to the excellence of tf crack" which is Northern Irish for light conversation especially pub conversation It is fortunately for the human race true that most people can adapt to and even see as normal almost any conditions I recall a penetrating comment from one of television's many programmes about India: "We know that much of our country is tragic but we don't feel the tragedy" A Belfast inhabitant came up conviction and I recall onlv "The War Lord" from Frank lin Schaffner and El Cid from Anthony Mann as having given complete satisfaction in this respect over the years Both were heroic-romantic in style but Yigne who collaborates on the script with the experienced Jean-Claude Car-riere works at what might be Return of Martin Guerre" Gerard Depardieu in The heroin problem has worsened in the laste few years according to a Rochdale police inspector because it is now widely smoked instead of being injected Last year his force arrested 44 small-time pushers The big time operators are still at large RICHARD LAST skies By Air Cdre Cooper Eastward a History of the Royal Air Force in the Far East 1945-1972 By Air Chief Marshal Sir David Lee (H 0 £12-95) rpHE re-occupation of South-East Asia after the Japanese surrender on Aug 14 1945 presented formidable problems for the British and Commonwealth forces The restoration of peacetime normality was to prove elusive for the unsettling period of Japanese control had allowed many nationalist extremists to oppose a peaceful return to hated pre-war colonial rule The first task was to release and rehabilitate some 123000 Allied prisoners-of-war and civilian internees and repatriate 630000 Japanese troops From the start there was disaffection among some of the liberators who were longing to get home after an arduous war and became restless over delays in demobilisation Eastward is an authoritative account of how the RAF coped with the problems of the Far East from 3945 to 1972 It is the second in a series of official studies of post-war RAF history written by Air Chief Marshal Sir David Lee the first being "Flight from the Middle East" Throughout the 27-year period the RAF was deeply involved in a continuous series of campaigns There was the re-occupation of Burma Siam French Indo-China and Hongkong the return to Malaya and Singapore and the occupation of the Netherlands East Indies The granting of independence to India saw a transfer of command to Singapore followed by the 12 years of the Malayan Emergency with the Korean War in progress for three of those years The RAF emerges with credit from this comprehensive study Sir David is able to conclude with conviction that the wisdom of concentrating Britain's air power into a single independent force in 1978 was demonstrated nowhere more convincingly than in the Far East The Command never had more than a few squadrons but they were always to be found at the seat of any trouble Sir David also concludes that the loss of the Far Fast station has deprived the RAF of tropical experience One of his main reasons for compiling the history was to safeguard for future generations of RAF personnel the lessons learned by their forebears against the time when the Service may again be required to operate in the jungles mountains and deserts of South-East Asia and the Middle East Faith and bricks just scored the equivalent of three A levels by her earnings as a prostitute on Hollywood Boulevard Tf this sounds unlikely and we never see her with a client it is nothing compared with what follows when she gets involved with a psychopath who is knifing girls of her kind Only Dick Shawn as a transvestite who looks after her comes out with credit and perhaps Rory Calhoun as a sharp shooter of the old school WITH ITS repetitious pictures of police clashing sometimes violently with peaceful demonstrators Patu! is in these striking times rather too familiar though the country is not Great Britain but New Zealand and it is not the progress of a strike but of a protest that is being followed It is the proposed 1-981 Rugby tour by the South African Springboks that is being objected to the Government which has permitted the tour being accused of supporting racism Feelings are certainly shown to be strong on the subject in this illustration of the campaign's progress fijpm Merata Mita a Maori director and so especially sensitive on racist issues Alas her enthusiasm exceeds her discretion A quarter of an hour would have encompassed her subject She takes two hours CHRIS MARKER'S Sans Soleil was winner of the I award at the last London Film Festival so it is high time it came on wider view though I myself find this illustrated travel diary somewhat overrated despite the LEFEVRE GALLERY SO Bruton Street Wl 01-493 1572 XIX XX CENTURY WORKS OF ART ON VIEW Mon-Fri 10-5 described as a domestic level though the true story he illustrates can be said to be surefire The basis is a famous trial for imposture resulting from events in the south-western French village of Artigat starting in 1542 Then a youns wife Bertrande of a prosperous peasant family found herself abandoned after a vear of marriage and bearing a son by her husband Martin Gurrre who came from similar stock He just disappeared never to be heard of only to reappear just as casually some nine years later having fought apparcntlv in the wars in Picardy He was recognised and welcomed as the long lost Martin by neighbours relations and wife by whom he bore more children and some time passed before his identitv was questioned bv some travellers who had fought in the same wars Such was the interest in the trial for imposture which eventually followed that a record by Jean de Caros a judge of the court of Toulouse went into four editions after publication in 1565 Montaigne who lived in these parts at the time commented on the case in an essay since when it has been much discussed in print over the years most recently bv the American novelist Janet ewis whose "The Wife of Martin Guerre" of 1A41 though it mav well have drawn attention to the subject has no mention in the credits to see more of such activities a harvesting or grape pressing It is a fault that the rustic picture seems excessively hygienic for the period all so ciean and tidy with no suggestion of farmyard squalor Still this background though idealised adequately supports the later trial scenes in Toulouse in which Martin is not undulv put out bv evidence from soldiers in the north that he is an imposter and for long it seems that his claim to be the real Martin will be upheld Trial scenes of course provide drama all too easily suspense too but the obvious is carefully avoided here thanks largely to a third key performance from Roger Planchon as the cool chief prosecutor What results is an absorbing story that has been told with varying interpretations down the centuries and still shows life VERY VERSATILE the actor Robert Duvall While his career reached a high spot this year with the award of an Oscar for his performance in Tender Mercies" he was putting the finishing touches to a film he has been directing and writing over a six-year period Angelo My Love A verv personal piece of work it is too which appears to have started with Mr Duvall on location in New York meeting an eight-year-old gipsy boy of Tt is certainly a tale which at everv stage leaves teasing questions to be answered and the enigmatic aspects such as the poor reasons advanced for Martin's original departure nr for that matter the vague motive for his return after nine years are fully exploited by the script so as to have spectators seeking solutions as if it were a detective story and indeed there are clues to be picked up Much of the interest depends on the seemingly saintlike character of the wife so patient in her nine years' vigil so forgiving on her husband's return and hardly less interest in the character of this Martin which appears softened by his absence and whose geniality is of a kind to gain confidence all round The film is lucky In its plavers here Nathalie Bave suggesting hidden depths of feeling as Bertrande her sweet facial features making duplicity seem out of the question while Gerard Depardieu is self-confidence personified as a Martin who we later realise must be constantly fearful of discovery by some careless slip of the toncue The little farming community in which thov live cheek bv jowl with relations and neighbours is caught economically and picturesquely bv the camera though I would expect LEGER 13 Old Bond St ROMNEY AS A PAINTER OF CHILDREN Loan exhibition to benefit NSPCC Mon-Fri 930-530 Sat 10-1 captivatiDg personality and conceiving the idea of using him as central character in a film film A script being needed Mr Duvall wrote his own and for other characters he went to Angelo's verv extensive family and their neighbours a gipsv colony in suburban New York being it seems by no means uncommon The form tfie script took was presumably that of scenario for Angelo could neither read nor write which made written dialogue useless and while we hear a good deal of talking between characters it is mostly like the action improvised What results chiefly due to the ebullient character of Angelo is a very lively and likeable little story full of gipsy lore turning on the theft from the family one night of an important ring and the bold steps taken by Angelo who saw the intruder to retrieve it What with much legal busi-nes over this ring Angelo's passion for an older larger and non-gipsv girl and a visit bv all to the annual gipsv feast of St Anne in Canada Mr Duvall is not short of incident: and he somehow manages to bring it and his plavers together to make one of the most original little films for years YOUNG MAN in spite nf racial prejudice overcomes difficulties to win a race at the Olympic Games Where have we heard that one before? Sufficiently rerently 1 would siv and in unchallengeable style in Chariots of Fire" AGNEW GALLERY 43 Old Bond St Wl 629 6176 Pre-Raphaelite Drawings and 19th Century Sculpture Until 27 July Mon-Fri 930-530 Thurs until 7 AGNEW GALLERY 43 Old Bond St Wl 629 6176 THE HEROIC AGE Important British Landscapes and Portraits 1630-1850 Until 3 August MonJn 930-530 Thurs until 7- BRITISH LIBRARY Gt Russell St WCI RENAISSANCE PAINTING IN MANUSCRIPTS RALEIGH AND ROANOKE: THE FIRST ENGLISH COLONY IN AMERICA 1584-90 Wkdys 10-5 Sun 230-6 Adm tite BROWSE DARBY 19 Cork St Wl 01-754 7984 PATRICK GEORGE Recent paintings CRANE KALMAN GALLERY 178 Brompton Rd SW3 01-584 7566 Mon-Fri 10-6 Sat 10-4 ALAN LOWNDES (1921-19281 1NAL WEEK ETROSPECTIVE FISCHER FINE ART 30 King St St lames's SWI 839 3942 Picasso Drawings from the MARINA-PICASSO COLLECTION: A Selection 1898-1972 Until 29 lune Mon-Fri 10-530 HAYWARD GALLERY (Arts Council) "-outh Bank London SE7 1066: ENGLISH ROMANESQUE ART Mon-Wed 10-8 Thurs Sat 10-6 Sun 12-6 Recorded Info on 01-261 0137 now extended to 22nd July MUSEUM OF MANKIND Burlington Gardens Wl Treasures from the Ethnographic Collection Msb-Sat 10-5 Suns 230-6 Adm freer PRE-AAPHAELITES SYMBOLISTS Burne-Jones Levy-Dhurmeh Waterhouse Abert Moore Sandys etc PETER NAHUM 5 Ryder St SWI 01-930 6059 Mon Fri 5-50 pm RICHARD GREEN 4 New Bond Street Wl 493 3939 BRITISH MARINE PAINTINGS Daily 10-6 Sats 10-1230 ROYAL ACADEMY Burlington House Piccadilly Open 10-6 dally inc Sunday THE SUMMER EXHIBITION until August 19 (closed 3 and 4 and 5 July) Admission £2 £1-40 concessionary rate and until 145 on Sun-davs PAINTINGS FROM THE ROYAL ACADEMY on their return from a US tour Admission: Free ROYAL SOCIETY of British Artists Annual Exhibition The Mail Galleries near Admiralty Arch SWI 19th June-lst July 10-5 Adm £1 TATE GALLERY Millbank SWi BECKMANN CARNIVAL Until 9 July SCULPTURE ON THE LAWN Until 15 July Adm free Wkdas 10-5-50 Suns 2-550 Recorded info 01-821 7128 brilliance of the photography and ingenuity of the construction The prose in particular which we hear read bv the artress Alexandra Stewart seems to be striving excessively for literarv distinction PATRICK GIBBS EXHIBITIONS JOHN MITCHELL SON 8 New Bond Street Wl 01-493 7567 FLOWER9 IN WATERCOLOUR An exhibition of flowers painting In watercolour qouache by Dutch French German and English artists of the 17th 18th and 19th centuries A full illustrated catalogue forward by Peter Mitchell with botanical commentary by Dr Sam Segal price £6 by post UK £7 Europe £8 USA $12 Wed June 20th-Friday July 6th 1984 Mon-Sat 10 am -6 pm THEATRE Morning's at Seven Older but certainly not wiser JOHN is having an exibition of his FURNITURE AND FABRIC DESIGNS at 6 Burnsall Street London SW3 from 13th Tune-27tn July 10 am -5 30 om music A rare night "Somethingratherinterestingand unexpected is happening at the Albery Theatre: The Clandestine Marriage arrives in London like abreathof fresh air" sundaytlmes than platonic Ary is of course appalled to find herself homeless To add to the mess the fourth sister Esther has quarrelled with her supercilious husband and is not living at home The plots are somewhat too cleverly intertwined and quite a bit too smoothly unravelled but the little jealousies misunderstandings and hidden secrets of familv life are so sharply observed as to be mainlv comical and finally touching while most of the acting is as good as any currently on view All Cora's sisters are treasur-able: Margaret Tyzack as the artier repressed Ary Doreen Mantle as poor Ida and Faith Brook as the lovely amused Fsther with Don Fellows and Peter Jones notable among the husbands Beside such artists Carl and his fiancee seem clumsily overdrawn bv John muning was never in doubt such was the control of structure and the flexibility of phrase which he encouraged In the first half of the programme the audience was equally well served for we heard a warmly sonorous and majestically paced performance of the prelude to Act I Wagner's Lohengrin" and a splendid interpretation of Brahms' Second Piano Concerto with Cecile Ousset in magisterial form The characteristic expressive world of the concerto which may be said to reside especially in the need for richly chorded textures to be played lightly was beautifully understood by Miss Ousset while Mr Sanderling and his players completed the picture with the most sensitive support ANTHONY PAYNE IN VIEW of general complaints about the stereotyped nature of Festival Hall programmes in recent times it is worth acclaiming the Philharmonia Orchestra's enterprise in giving a rare performance there last night under Kurt Sanderling of Shostakovitch's Sixth Symphony This magnificent work characteristically encompassing the purely tragic in its spacious opening Largo as well as the ironically perky or blackly humorous in the two short following quick movements is most daring in the contrasting materials it seeks to integrate And as always with Shostakovich is stunning in its virtuoso use of the orchestra This showed to wonderful effect in the magnificent orchestral playing which Mr Sander-ling drew while the intensity of the music's spiritual com THEY SAY well don't they? that as you grow older you grow wiser A life comes to anchor at last in a peaceful haven Or youthful follies left behind calm descends as we slowly steer towards the sunset What poppycock this is becomes the theme of Morning's at Seven at the Westminster a beguiling comedy mainly about older people who although sensible average folk prove to be as acquisitive self-doubting stubborn and emotionally fraught as probably at any time in their lives First seen in London in 1955 the comedy was recently revived and acclaimed on Broadway winning a Tony Award for its present director Vivian Matalon I saw and liked it then and can promise that this version is a spitting image of the one New Yorkers took to its heart Admittedly Broadway's heart is more susceptible than I on-don's to the problems of older people The four sisters who do most of their living in adjoining backyards in a small mid-Western town are in their late sixties or a trifle more Ida a fussbudget is saddled with a neurotically worried husband Carl their faintheart son is bringing home the fiancee of some eight years When his father wanders off into the night Carl grabs at the excuse to stay home with mother and gives up the empty house waiting for newly-weds But the central character is Ida's sister Cora made endearing by Teresa Wright the American actress who took the role in New York Cora now grabs a lease on Carl's house-mainly so as to get rid of her lifetime and hated house-guest Ary her cantankerous unmarried sister The point is that Ary's attachment to Cora's husband is more Church and Andree MHIv john barber Almeida Festival Athletics at a jog By Canon Gundry Our Christian Heritage By Warwick Rodwell and James Bentley (George -Philip £10-95) Blue Guide Cathedrals and Abbeys of England and Wales By Keith Spence (A Black Benn £14-95 paperback £7-95) T1EAUTIFULLY produced "as companion volume to the current Christian Heritage Year Our Christian Heritage has photographs many taken from the air that are breathtaking The text is a vigorously written survey of Britain's architectural treasures most of them cathedrals and other churches The outstanding pictures of three masterpieces Lavenham Parish Church St Mary's Oldham and St Mary's Cathedral Edinburgh immediately evoke a doxology So too do many others including Scott's splendid All Souls' Hayley Hill happily rescued by private initiative If some of the millions poured into central church administration had been used to strengthen the local ministry churches might not have decayed in problem areas The timely final chapter A Heritage for the Future challenges the Philistinism and indifference of certain trendy elements in Church and State today which are insensitive to our heritage Too many churches have been closed This book is very good value for money and will both educate and delight "Blue Guide: Cathedrals and Abbeys" is expensive even in the paperback edition but it provides succinct reliable information with pictures maps and plans of cathedrals and many abbeys ruined or otherwise in England and Wales A pity Scotland is left out with the pianist Peter FrankI was the brilliant soloist in the severely abstract almost harshly virtuosic second violin sonata Whereas the tone of the quintet is one of a darkly hued threnody that of the sonata excitable and aggressive two little Hymnns dating from the mid 1970s one for cello and double bass the other for cello basoon harpsichord and bells seem to inhabit a more fugitive and archaic world Very different again are the Three Madrigals for soprano and five instruments of 1980 delicate and fragile ROBERT HENDERSON Anthony Quayle: "HYPNOTIC" STANDARD RoyKinnear: "MARVELLOUS" SUNDAYTLMES Joyce Redman: "EXPLOSIVE" THE TIMES The Albery Theatre St Martin's Lane London WC2 Tel 01-836 3878 Credit Cards Sales 01-3796565 3796433 Wood's 'Red Star By Our Arts Staff A new plav bv Charles Wood called "Red Star" will be given its world premiere by the Royal Shakespeare Company in The Pit at London's Barbican Centre next month Richard Griffiths will star in the play as an actor with the Theatre of Glorious Soviet Agricultural Workers in Moscow who after a lifetime of walk-ons is about to play his first major part the title role in Julius Caesar" when his ability to impersonate Stalin lands him in trouble The play opens on July 25 with previews from July 19 Also due next month are new productions of John Dichton's farce The Happiest Days of Your Life" directed by Clifford Williams with a cast that includes Maria Aitken and Peggy Mount and of John Whiting's The Devils" directed by John Barton The Almeida Festival last night introduced into its programmes five evenings of Soviet music films and readings with an inaugural concert at the Almeida Theatre devoted to the composer Alfred Schnittke who celebrates his 50th birthday later in the year The debt which Schnittke and others of his generation owe to Shostakovich was eloquently commemorated in the Pre-ludium in Memoriam Shostakovich of 1975 the simple plangently lamenting phrases of its unaccompanied violin echoed from about midway through the piece onwards by a second offstage violin in melancholy dialogue Shostakovich also casts a long shadow over the piano quintet composed in the following year Again the dominant tone of its five slowly paced movements is one of sombre brooding lamentation In keeping with a work dedicated to the memory of his mother its music seems permeated with memories with ghostly reminiscences that occasionally burst out into moments of near hysterical despair The excellent quintet in this both haunted and haunting music was led by the fine Russian violinist Mark Lubotsky who in graphic partnership GOLDEN GIRLS by Louise Page at The Other Place Strat-ford-ujjjDn-Avon is a leaden attempt to dramatise the world of amateur women athletes What is it like to train? Who sponsors them and what demands do the sponsors make? Are they tempted to take drugs? And what are the pressures? These and many other questions are answered at a jog trot in a story about the 100 metres relay race The shampoo company promoting the British runners who include three black girls erpects to get publicity at the snap of its fingers The doctor who looks after their diet used herself to run and think that if she makes them think they are taking something to make them run faster they will They duly do And thy win And (need I add?) there is a handsome male runner who causes a nutter among them as well as a grubby journalist looking for scandal and an over-fond father pampering his daughter But the going is theatrically slow despite the ingenuity of Barry Kyle's production for this small arena in simulating training on the track and in the gym and in the final strobe-lit sprinting on the spot It isn't only that the play seems to have been prosaically researched rather than written so that we seem to get more background than foreground It is also that we are asked to concern ourselves with people to whom only the obvious things happen The tale might have been more effectively told in a newspaper article or a television programme but the production is interesting because the Royal Shakespeare Company puts in such a sporting performance in conjuring for us the atmosphere of these team-bound rivals as they make their way to what they hope is stardom We are bound to applaud the efforts of Josette Simon Cathy Tyson and Alphonsia Emmanuel as the black girls Jennifer Piercey as their doctor and Kenneth Branagh as a bit of a heartthrob Indeed the whole company makes an admirable team But it is a far from admirable play which they have to enact ERIC SHORTER 3B2 Want to know whafs available in the rapidly expanding IBM PG Market? Gome and see all the latest developments under one roof at the 1984 PG User Show Just register at the door and entrance is FREE! All you need to know about IBM Personal Computing Organised in conjunction with PG User Magazine The 1984 PG User Show Cunard International Hotel Hammersmith London WS Open July 3rd 4th 10am-6pm July 10am-430pm Marceau returns The French mime Marcel Marceau is to give a four-week season at the Old Vic Theatre from August 20 to September 15 Listen From the edge of your seat you can almost smell the playing I i I ii' ii i I ii" II1'- mm am fields or Albion House hear the dangers being dropped in the corridors Listen and laugh afc 'Forty Years Orf byAlan Bennett VVRh Sir John Gieigud and Paul Eddington The Dog It Was That DiedTThe Dissolution of Dominic Boot by Tom Stoppard With Dinsdale Landen John Le Mesurier and Penelope Keith Under The Loofah TreeVThe Disagreeable Oyster by Giles Cooper With Cyril Shaps and William Eedle Also available Raymond Brjg When The Wfcxl Blows'-Conan Doylefs 'A Study 1 Scarlet and Victor of power and feel the warm bath-water of life turning cokLPIays OnTape'- a supero piays especially created ror sound and originally broadcast on BBC radio and superb players combine to bring the theatre to you When you want it Where you want it POTtertons'NjgrACTTrteVtorc am mr-rmmmwrm mm Available frcmWH Smith record stores and selected bookshops ii.