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london ticket by Sheridan Morley Autumn Highlights Although it has been the National Theatre, with Trevor Nunn's stunning ensemble in everything from Candide to Summerfolk , which has led all classical theatre listings this year (and will doubtless come good at awards time), the Royal Shakespeare Company has come back to life at the Barbican recently with some late-season challenges, notably the Nigel Hawthorne King Lear, which may, he threatens, be his farewell stage appearance due to the illness of his long-time partner), as directed by Ninagawa; and Alan Bates in Antony and Cleopatra as well as an Antony Sher Macbeth due in from Stratford alongside the RSC's first black Othello in 40 years since Robeson, this one Ray Fearon. Elsewhere, at the Victoria Palace, there's a radical new staging by Simon Callow of the Adler/Ross Pajama Game; Ian McDiarmid is The Jew of Malta at the Almeida; Tara Fitzgerald is Antigone for Declan Donnellan; Barbara Dickson is an unlucky lottery winner in Spend Spend Spend; Alan Ayckbourn's new comedy is the robotic Comic Potential at the Lyric; Ute Lemper is in solo cabaret at the Queen's; and you would hardly expect me not to note that next door at the Gielgud, I have ddirected Kika Markham and Corin and Vanessa Redgrave in Noel Coward's last play, Song at Twilight, a gay blackmail thriller, which is the first to bring those Redgraves together onstage. Oh, yes, and we also get The Lion King into the Lyceum, but somehow I suspect that you already knew that. King Tom "You get a better class of text in the theatre; if you want to be a Hollywood film star, it's just a lot of grunting and looking pretty; besides, I could never have lived there—it would be like putting a plant that likes chalk into an acid soil," says Tom Courtenay, currently giving a King Lear reckoned to be closer to Samuel Beckett than most, at his beloved Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester. It has been almost 40 years now since he, Peter O'Toole, Albert Finney and Alan Bates became the first world-class movie stars to have emerged from the Royal Court revolution in the British theatre. This autumn, O'Toole is back at the Old Vic as Jeffrey Bernard, Bates is at Stratford with the Shakespeare Antony, and Courtenay has the Lear. What of Finney? The occasional movie or British TV series, but basically only now to finance his passion for running a racing stable in Ireland, we are in danger of losing the best of them all to the turf. As for the others, movies are no longer very central to their acting lives; the theatre is where they began, and the theatre is where they have returned. Hollywood was, after all, just an intermission. [[image: photo of Tom Courtenay]] Courtnay now... [[image: photo of young Tom Courtenay]] Copyright © 1963, Continental Distributing Inc. ...and then (as a film star in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner) Sheridan Morley's Private Lives of Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence has just been published by Oberon, as has The Coward Companion, which he and Barry Day have brought up to date. Beyond the Rainbow, a critical celebration of Judy Garland written with Ruth Leon, has also just been published by Pavilion, as has The Quotable Coward by Running Press. 60 WWW.PLAYBILL.COM PURE THEATRE ONLINE [[end page]] [[start page]] Slip into something more comfortable. The Cradle Seat in Club World business class doesn't simply recline, but tilts as a whole to support every part of your body evenly. It's so comfortable that once you slip in, you may well drift right off. 1-800-AIRWAYS britishairways.com BRITISH AIRWAYS The world's favourite airline
