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CBS NEWS SPECIAL (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). A look at wartime changes in the life of Saigon.
In coming weeks check your educational TV stations for:
NET JOURNAL (shown on Mondays). "Schizophrenia—The Shattered Mirror," an hour-long examination of the causes, effects and current treatment for schizophrenia, all covered by leading doctors in the field. The program will focus on a pretty ballet student, recently released from a mental hospital, who walks a tense tightrope as she teeters precariously on the edge of a relapse.
NET PLAYHOUSE (shown on Fridays). "The Battle of Culloden" reconstructs the last battle on British soil, then turns to an examination of its ferocious aftermath.
THEATER
On Broadway
BLACK COMEDY. Borrowing a technique from Chinese theater, Peter Shaffer looses eight characters on a stage that is supposed to be in total darkness. Director John Dexter manipulates them in a fracturingly funny people jam, with Michael Crawford, Geraldine Page and Lynn Redgrave leading the acrobatics.
THE HOMECOMING is both realistic and surreal, on a mythic yet natural plane. And it is most unconventionally conventional. While defying the norms of family and society, the domestic drama by British Playwright Harold Pinter is an exercise in instinctual logic. Vivien Merchant and Paul Rogers lead a perfect cast in Peter Hall's pluperfect production.
THE WILD DUCK. Although he was dedicated to candor in human relations, Playwright Henrik Ibsen recognized all too clearly that it is kinder to consider what men wish they could be than to deal with them as they are. In its revival of this 1884 play, the APA troupe performs with more precision than passion.
AT THE DROP OF ANOTHER HAT. Sound a bellow with a whisper, match a maharajah with a mouse, mix wit with whimsy, and you have the combination for an evening of charming entertainment by Flanders and Swann.
WALKING HAPPY is the musical version of H. G. Brighouse's quasi classic, Hobson's Choice. It introduces British Musicomedian Norman Wisdom to Broadway audiences, and a most pleasant acquaintance he is. While the score is forgettable, Danny Daniels' choreography is fresh and memorable.
Off Broadway
THE RIMERS OF ELDRITCH. Lanford Wilson re-creates the mood and the milieu of a ghost mining town in the Midwest. Fluidly paced by Director Michael Kahn, Rimers is really a collection of vignettes that might have come from Winesburg, Ohio, set in the dramatic form of Under Milk Wood.
EH? In Cervantes' classic, a Spanish "knight" fights a windmill—and loses. In Henry Livings' farce, a British nit challenges a boiler—and the boiler loses.
AMERICA HURRAH. A gifted young playwright, Jean-Claude van Itallie, stirs the waters of the contemporary scene to create dramatic whirlpools as he investigates American life in Interview, TV and Motel.
RECORDS
Teen Hits