The Daily Telegraph from London, Greater London, England • 10

a a a a in 10 THE DAILY TELEGRAPH, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1987 FILMS A designer devil with -force charm THE DEVIL seems to have got into the film- makers this autumn. The personificaevil was Robert De Niro rolling diabolical orange eyes in Shew Jack Faustian Nicholson Angel blows into town in The Witches of Eastwick with gale-force charm. Nicholson is a designer devil, dressed by Cerruti, summoned to the perfect New England town of Eastwick by the combined processes of Cher, Sarandon and Mithought, chelle Pfeiffer, as three strongminded, stunning and single women in search of one real man to satisfy all their desires. Only he is not quite the dark, handsome stranger they bargained for. He seduces all three in turn and they then set a outraging the provincial proprieties of a community that has failed to graduate from witch-hunts to psychology.

Directed by George "Mad Max" Miller, the film is glossy, stylish and tremendous fun. Some of the best talent in Hollywood has been brought together with devil-may-care extravagance that has for once paid off by producing something. enjoyable and actually sexy, mainly because there is no specific sex -just sexy people. John Updike's novel has been freely adapted by Pulitzer prizewinning playwright Michael Cristofer with elegance. Not many films give SO many actresses such sharp lines, tipping the supernatural thriller into a robust the sexes.

Was it just a mistake when God created woman, wonders Nicholson, "or did he do it on purpose?" Jack Nicholson's performance is deliciously outrageous but the women are up to his weight. This is one Cher that has not gone down. Only the last part of the film disappoints when horror comic effects take over as if the Oscar-winning Industrial Light and Magic people had sold Miller a party The Witches of Eastwick (18) Cannons Shaftesbury Avenue, Fulham Road, Screen on the Green Eat the Rich (15) Cannons Haymarket, Oxford Street, Fulham Road, Baker Street, Bayswater The Last of England (18) Cannon Prince Charles Made in Heaven (PG) Chelsea Cinema, Renoir Who's That Girl? (15) Warner West End The Rescuers (U) Odeon Marble Arch, Cannon Haymarket bag of tricks and he felt obliged to use them all up. FASHION afflicts the film industry in the same way as everything else. The current fad There is a lot of it about in "The Witches of Eastwick" and it is inevitable in Eat the Rich, the latest anarchic effort from the Comic Strip of Peter Richardson, Rik Mayall, Nigel Planer et al." A disaffected waiter, Alex (Lamar Pellay, who was a man and is now a woman playing a man), is sacked from London's trendiest restaurant, Bastards, where the set price is £200 for lightly fried baby panda.

He robs a dole office and sets off with ex-bouncer Ron (Ron Tarr) and piano player Jimmy (Jimmy Fagg) to start a people's uprising. Their particular demon is the cockney fascist Home Secretary Nosher (Nosher chap who bashes terrorists' heads together for breakfast and enjoys a lascivious Sun photo opportunity with Fiona Richmond. repossesses. Bastards with bow and arrow, slaughters the clientele and recycles them through the mincer, with chips, as dish of the day at the renamed restaurant Eat Rich which manta do, with Filofax on the side and regurgitation to follow. The film, directed and written by Richardson, is funnier than expected, which is not to say that it is as funny as it ought to be, mainly because Lamar Pellay is less disaffected than affected.

However, Nosher Powell, the Tooting publican, stunt man and ex-boxer, is splendidly rumbustious, charging his first screen role in throudle green mohair suit and Doc Martens. "Eat the Rich" has the air of a party to which lots of people were invited and some turned up, including Paul McCartney, Koo Stark and Bill Wyman (as "toilet victim') and Ronald Allen plays the head of MI5 in the upper-crust tradition of Eton, Cambridge and Moscow. POLITICALLY "Eat the Rich" is in fantasy land, while in The Last of England Derek Jarman looks at the future and foresees it isn't what it used to be. Sunlight home-movies of his Mum and Dad in a happier past are cut in with his vision of the execution squads spawned by Mrs Thatcher's Britain. Thinking, sensitive souls be left naked, living on bomb sites and being sick on raw cauliflower.

Made Super 8 and blown up as a fuzzy dream allegory, "The Last of England" is interesting as anyone else's movies. Defying conventional narrative, Jarman uses sound, jerky images, that poetry: rasp the eye, "Where's and Hope? The little white lies have carried her off beyond the cabbage patch." There is wearisome desire to shock, yet the homosexual love scene between a naked man and a terrorist in a balaclava is just unattractive bad manners. TIMOTHY HUTTON has a choice God and the Devil in Heaven, Alan between, Rudolph's fantasy about finding the perfect match. Hutton ROCK A good time with a nice guy IT GETS Bryan Adams down that rock journalists seem unable to mention his name without writing "Bruce Springsteen" in the same rattle word-processor keyboard. "If you're gonna compare me to someone," he told magazine, "then I think Rod Stewart and the Faces is a much fairer The music aside, Adams could hardly be more different from those Seventies superlads.

He's apparently a nice, polite young man. He comes from Canada, has a sensible haircut, doesn't smoke or take drugs and drinks cautiously. The only known excessive aspect of his personal life is that his steady Vicki is the daughter of Ken Russell. up lyin' on the Can't recall the night sang Wembley Arena with his. Stewartesque gravel voice, in the song "Another His multi-million selling repertoire, written with nonperforming partner Jim Vallance, is made up of two sorts of song: quite fast and slightly slower good-time rock 'n' roll.

To take up Adams's comparison, the Faces sounded very like this, except that they always gave the impression that the uncomplicated, hackneyed formula was stretching their capabilities to the limit; Adams and his band, better, sober musicians, better rehearsed, lack the Faces' ramshackle charm The studied yobbishness of some of the words is a match for the calculatedly obvious music: "Some other other might not of bin face to face" is how the inner sleeve of the latest LP, "Into the gives the lines of "Hearts on scrawled-on-a-fagopening, packet words, more likely to have been first jotted down in a Filofax. Princess Diana and Adams are mutual fans, and he has written a raunchy number for her, "First time I saw you I was readin' a magazine I'll 1 bring love if you bring your limousine." The audience, wildly enthusiastic throughout the set yelling, waving arms and flags football-terrace style and singing along word-perfectly in the choruses, exactly like a vintage Faces crowdlost none of its enthusiasm when presented with this most glaring example of sham rock. And in "Native Keith Scott's uninventive guitar solo was gasped and screamed at. a The capacity house was determined to have a good time, Adams, Vallance and band supplied the need like the consummate pros they are. Tim Rostron In the dark about school governors and governing? The TES will lighten your darkness.

New legislation has given parents and governors more powers and responsibilities. The TES will give you the facts in its customary comprehensive and down to earth style. For eight weeks starting October 23rd, The Times Educational Supplement will publish a four page pull-out on "Governors and Governing" The TES. Essential reading for everyone concerned about education. Every Friday 60p.

THE TIMES Educational Supplement TELEVISION Light touch with portrait painters WHAT SORT of sales would you get today with a book called "The Rudiments of Genteel Behaviour'? According to Changing Faces (C4) it went down treat in 1737 with minor portrait painters searching for a dignified pose for His Nibs. There is more than meets the eye in this agreeable series which traces the changing role and ideals of British portrait painters. It manages to be light but not superficial. Nor does it engage in art historians' snobbish prostration in front of the English aristocratic patron who called the tune for painters. Philip Mould, writer and presenter, has a nice line in detail, whether it's painterly or social.

Last week on the Augustan age we met Gainsborough's Captain Merlin, inventor of the rollerskate. In general Mr Mould was cleverer in a shorter compass about Hogarth and his contemporaries than the lumbering exhibition now at the Tate. This week we reached the Victorian age via Sir Thomas Lawrence who stripped the wig and gave "for the first time in 150 years a haircut in a society Mr Mould was highly appreciative about G. F. Watts which suggested to me a trip to the National Portrait Gallery to have a closer ish look worthiests's gallery of BritI regret that I have never become a as people pompously call admirers of this Russian dramatist.

Last night's Bookmark, "A Visit Vanya" (BBC-2) therefore never set my pulses racing. Yet it is glasnost, this time a again, from the Moscow Arts Theatre with their director Oleg Efremov, showing American drama students how to make "Uncle Vanya" interesting. The "workshop" venue was Balliol College, coyly referred to as Oxford Surely everyone knows that Oxford colleges during the summer months become a vast playpen for American students, whose touching enthusiasm for English life is such that they never wait to get within normal speaking range, but bellow from opposite sides of the quad: "I've ve found, a real neat pub in Woodstock." Pleasant to know that those stentorian tones can modulate quite sweetly to give Chekhov a chance. The London Embassy (ITV) is a quite exceptionally silly series of comic stories about a young American diplomat lost in the sophistication of London life. The hero, Spencer Savage (Kristoffer Tabori), is clearly a cut above his colleagues since he can quote Rupert Brooke over the Nonetheless, the Grosvenor Square Embassy would seem to be staffed by idiots according to this.

We are asked to believe that a young diplomat is posted to London with nowhere live. Then he buys a flat in Battersea through the kind offices of a lady who shares her affections with him as well as an Iranian. Young Savage is in the habit of forgetting his ID card but the security lady crisply reminds him "We're very security-conscious in this embassy." You don't say. It seems no English producer can rid American TV actors of those dreadful tics we know so well. Spencer Savage has a bad attack of the overworking masseter.

At least, that is how my dentist describes the little muscle which jerks up and down on American actors' jaws to indicate emotion. Then there's the explosive-laugh syndrome. This means that characters emerge from a room, look at each other mutely for a regulation two seconds, then "explode" in guffaws. So natural, don't you see? Patricia Morison Supernatural thriller: Jack Nicholson in "The Witches of Eastwick" drowns, goes to a paradise where "anything you can imagine is" including Kelly McGillis. They fall in love but she is sent to earth for a life-cycle in the Sixties.

Hutton decides heaven can wait, chosing to be born again in order find her. It is an affectionate but inconsequential fairy-tale. JON PETERS and Peter Guber, producers of "The Witches of are responsible for Who's That Girl? She is Madonna and this is supposedly a romantic comedy, however in MOZART and Schumann have provided a convenient link between two Wigmore Hall recitals this week, given by musicians whose reputations in pianistic circles have been growing steadily since their London debuts in the early Seventies. As a pupil of Serkin and Horszowski at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, the Canadian Paul Berkowitz could hardly have had a more auspicious pedigree. From those two great pianists, his playing has inherited a solid foundation in the classical tradition.

And after settling in this country after his first Wigmore recital in 1973, he has himself become a noted teacher at the Guildhall School of Music, as as performer. Earlier this year he received high praise for the first issue in a series of recordings for Meridian of the late Schubert sonatas. This month sees the release of the second instalment in the series, of the minor Sonata D. 958. And it was that same work which occupied the second half of THE GOOD news is that "Hiawatha" is set to make a come-back.

Aficionados of the Royal Choral Society will tell you, dewy-eyed, of the days when Sir Malcolm Sargent held sway over squaws and warriors whooping round the Albert Hall, brandishing their tomahawks and singing praises to Minnehaha. But we cannot sample all that until next July, when the RCS presents its first staging of Coleridge-Taylor's cantata in 50 years. In the meantime, the choir continues its performances of the standard repertory, and on Tuesday night at the Festival Hall it was Haydn's The decision to do it in German probably helped nobody, least of all the choir itself. Historically, English words have near enough the same validity as the German, and surely the only reason for opting for van Swieten's German text is the likelihood of it producing a more vital performance. ART GALLERIES BARBICAN ART GALLERY level 8, Barbican Centre, London EC2.

01-638 4141 ext. 406. THE IMAGE OF LONDON: Views by Travellers Emigres 1550-1920. 6 Oct. Tues Sat 10a.m.-6.45 p.m.

Sun Bk Hol. p.m. CLOSED MON except Bk Hols. Adm. £2.50 conc.

£1.25. FINE ART SOCIETY 148 New Bond St, W1. 01-629 5116. HELEN LESSORE. MARTYN GREGORY: HILDA MAY GORDON.

Vivid impressions of an artist's travels around the World in the 1920's. 7 24 October (10-6 weekdays; 10-1 Saturdays) 34, Bury Street, St. James's, 01-839 3731. NEW WORKS by Nicola Counsell and Nicholas Jolly at Solomon Gallery, 10 Dover Street, W1 499 4701. THACKERAY GALLERY 18, Thackeray St; W8.

937 5885. Mardi Barrie recent paintings until 6th CINEMAS CURZON MAYFAIR, Curzon Street 499 3737 YVES MONTAND GERARD DEPARDIEU in JEAN DE FLORETTE (PG). Film at 1.15 (not Sun.) 3.30, 6.00, 8.30. "Most compelling film in D. Tel.

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this film it is the romance that is sick-making and the comedy just isn't there. Madonna struts and squeaks as a recidivist shop-lifter wrongly accused of murder. Griffin Dunne is all too bemused as the strait lawyer landed with female anarchist and a large cougar in the back of the Rolls. Jim Foley, who made Madonna's music videos "Live to Tell" and Don't directs but only seems to have succeeded in telling the big cat what to do. THERE IS genuine animal mag- CONCERTS Strength and eloquence Tuesday's recital in a performance of an imposing, virile strength.

The first movement was bold and craggy, the scherzo and finale, particularly effective in their Schubertian unease and tautly sprung rhythms. Between them was an adagio of an eloquent, starkly contained drama. Even when he allowed the dynamic level to go beyond the reasonably acceptable, it was Schubert formidable conviction. He seemed rather less comfortable with the Schumann of the its eerie Hoffmannesque fantasy vividly portrayed, while being The language barrier Here, though, the singing sounded tentative in 'Die Himmel die Ehre whereas a good solid Heavens are Telling the Glory of God" would have shown up more of the choir's familiar full-throatedness and exuberance. some untidy starts an die or "Awake the Harp" was a case in point, and heads in scores led to some woolliness elsewhere.

It was certainly not a vintage RCS evening. Laszlo Heltay's conducting was generalised and dutifully controlled instead of taking its cue more pliably from the words to CURZON WEST END Shaftesbury Ave W1 439 4805 Dennis Hopper in RIVER'S EDGE (18) Film at 2.00 (not Sun) 4.10 6.20 8.40 miss" Mail "Utterly Tel LEICESTER SQUARE THEATRE 930 7615 (24 hour Bookings) ANGEL HEART (18) Sep progs Daily 1.45 5.00 8.20. All progs bookable in advance. MINEMA 45 KNIGHTSBRIDGE 235. 4225.

RADIO DAYS (PG) Daily 3.0. 5.0. 7.0. 9.0. ODEON HAYMARKET (839 7697) HOPE AND GLORY (15) Sep progs Daily 2.30 5.30 8.30.

All seats bookable in advance. Access and Visa telephone bookings welcome. ODEON LEICESTER SQUARE (930 6111) Info 930 Walt Disney's Classic SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS (U) Sep progs Doors open Daily 1.45 4.30 7.15. All progs bookable in advance. Credit Card Hot Line 930 3232 or 839 1929, 24 hour service.

ODEON MARBLE ARCH (723 2011) HEARTS OF FIRE (15) Sep progs Doors open Daily 1.45 4.00 6.15 8.30. Evening performance bookable in advance. Reduced prices for OAP'S. UB40 holders and Under 16's. EXHIBITIONS LETTS KEEP A DIARY EXHIBITION.

Original diaries of famous and everyday people from Tudor times to present day. Mail Galleries, The Mall. London, SW1. Open daily 10.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m.

until 25 October. ic in The Rescuers, the last film from Walt Disney's original nine-man team of animators. Made 10 years ago it was Disney's 19th feature-length cartoon and, although not one of the studio's classics, warmth, humour and delightful characterisation. The late Geraldine Page provides a devilish voice for the wicked Medusa who keeps hungry crocodiles Brutus and Nero as waterskis. I'd feed them Madonna.

Victoria Mather much more technically vunerable. Of his two Mozart pieces, the minor Adagio was articulated with a poised, almost baroque intensity of expression, the major Rondo with and adroit clarity and elegance. Whereas Berkowitz's temperamental affinity would seem to be with the later, bigboned sonatas of a Schubert or Beethoven, it is as a Bach player that the South American pianist Jean Louis Steuerman has become probably best known here. Whether or not it was simply that he was far below his best form, his account of the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue at the start of his recital was unexpectedly flabby and imprecise. In spite of some Mozart's A minor Sonata K.

310 was given a plain, dutiful performance. And before going on to two Skryabin sonatas, the Schumann "Arabesque" was dispatched with hardly a trace sensibility or charm. Robert Henderson characterise -this or that aria or chorus. John Tomlinson sang the bass arias and recitatives strongly; Maldwyn Davies and Yvonne Kenny were the tenor and soprano. the performance as a whole, style was the quality that was missing.

This should not to be mistaken for for neither the RCS nor the Wren Orchestra of London would be happy to align themselves with that as far as Haydn concerned. But this was compromise, and an uncomfortable one at that; it lacked real conviction and confidence, whereas in the past we have known the RCS as a corporate personality of distinct verve in whatever music it was singing. "Hiawatha" might well tell another story. Geoffrey Norris Spink Buy Jewellery Silver Spink Son Limited King Street, St James's. London SWI.

Telephone 01-930 7888 (24 hours) Established 1666 ROVACABIN PORTABLE BUILDINGS FOR HIRE OR SALE Delivered fast -built to PHONE US last FREE 585 383 0800 OVACABIN YOUNGMAN SYSTEM BUILDING LTD. THEATRE All in the mind A FEW minutes into Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind at the Royal Court Theatre it seemed that the play contained one sane character, surrounded by a varied assortment of lunatics. The sane person was Mike, whom we first meet in the second scene, a hospital room somewhere in. the west of America. fie is attempting to comfort his sister Beth who has suffered severe injuries to her head which have affected her ability to think or speak clearly.

In a later scene, Mike helps her with therapy designed to assist her recovery. We have discovered that Beth's injuries are due to her having been beaten her husband Jake, a dangerous young psychotic. In Act II, when Beth has been removed to her parents' house somewhere in the backwoods of Montana, it begins to emerge that Mike is as unbalanced as everyone else. Perhaps Jake's brother Frankie is the sane pivot around which these nutcases revolve. By this time we have met the other members of both families.

Jake's mother and young sister may not be actually certifiable, but Beth's parents, Meg and Baylor, are something else. But I imagine this is not the way one is meant to approach a work by Sam Shepard, the American playwright who has been critically acclaimed in his own country as a modern O'Neill. Mr Shepard deals not in characters but in myths. He writes lines of dialogue or long speeches for his actors which are so imprecisely worded that they are often ignorantly described as poetry. Meaning is in the mind of the listener.

There are faint echoes of O'Neill in "A Lie of the and somewhat stronger echoes of Tennessee Williams, but Mr Shepard possesses neither the rough-hewn gift for story-telling through characterisation of the former nor the poetic imagination of the latter. What Shepard does have is a strong theatricality which works effectively while one is watching it, though it tends to dissolve into thin air once the lights come up. He strikes me as being a man made angry by his own feelings of sentimentality and nostalgia for a past which never existed, and frustrated by his inability to envisage a future. The present is Hell, nor is he out of it. The play, in three acts of about an hour each, is far too long for its content: I was tired of these people by the end of Act II, and spent much of the last act drafting legislation to limit all plays to a running time of two-and-a-half hours.

Mr Shepard's play is well acted. Will Patton, the sole American in an otherwise home-grown cast, brings the obligatory Stanley Kowalskilike presence to Jake, Tony Haygarth is thoroughly convinc-ing as Beth's deer-shooting illiterate redneck of a father, and Miranda Richardson is appropriately macabre as the braindamaged Beth. Collectors bizarre theatrical experiences will relish Geraldine McEwan whose idiosyncratic diction and squint survive her not too deep immersion in the role of Jake's mother, Lorraine. Simon Curtis directed. Charles Osborne digger THE NEW SATIRICAL MAGAZINE WITH THE INSIDE STORIES CHRISTIE'SAMSTERDAM Tudaica Forthcoming Sale in Amsterdam Specialists in Judaica will be at Christie's King Street on Wednesday 28th October and Thursday 29th October from 9.30 a.m.

to 5.00 p.m. to give advice and free valuations on Hebrew Printed Books and Manuscripts, Ceremonial Objects, including Silver, Brass and Textiles, and Judaic Objects of Art including Pictures. For further information and appointments please contact Anke Adler-Slottke or Amelia Fitzalan Howard in the Overseas Office. 0 8 King Street, St. Tel: 01-839 9060 Telex: 916429.