International Notes

Summary

A selection has been made from the reports received from our correspondents, those which present material of a particularly interesting kind being printed in their entirety, or largely so. It should be emphasized that the choice of countries to be thus represented has depended on the nature of the information presented in the reports, not upon either the importance of the countries concerned or upon the character of the reports themselves.

Australia

In 1961 an Old Vic Company presented in the Australian capital cities three plays, of which one was Twelfth Night (with Vivien Leigh as Viola). Sydney had also what was called, perhaps optimistically, the 'First Sydney Shakespeare Festival', when John Alden Shakespeare Productions Ltd, with the assistance of the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust, gave performances of Othello, Macbeth and The Merchant of Venice, in at least three different theatres. Macbeth and The Merchant were well received but not Othello.

Melbourne and Brisbane also saw performances of Macbeth, by the Union Theatre Repertory Company and the Twelfth Night Theatre respectively. (The Melbourne Company used an Elizabethan type stage.) In Brisbane the Arts Theatre presented Julius Caesar, and the Repertory Theatre, Twelfth Night. In Victoria, there was a second production of Macbeth by the Morwell Players, in modern dress (technical school students being co-opted for crowd scenes and to make scenery and properties).