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INADMISSIBLE EVIDENCE. Middle age, joyless loves, and his own irredeemable mediocrity have given John Osborne's anti-hero a screaming case of psychic jitters. Yet the play is armed with irascible wit, and Nicol Williamson's whiplash acting raises laughs as well as welts.
THE PERSECUTION AND ASSASSINATION OF MARAT AS PERFORMED BY THE INMATES OF THE ASYLUM OF CHARENTON UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE MARQUIS DE SADE. With the cool ferocity of a mad scientist, Director Peter Brook conducts a controlled experiment in audience anxiety. Result: exciting theater that may scare the living daylights out of playgoers.
CACTUS FLOWER is a French farce adapted to U.S. tastes by Director Abe Burrows. Handling dialogue like a bone-dry martini, Nurse Lauren Bacall is all efficiency in the office but predictably cuts loose on the dance floor, with some torso twisting that causes Dentist Barry Nelson to drop his dentures.
THE ROYAL HUNT OF THE SUN. Chris topher Plummer gives a forceful interpretation of the stormy Conquistador Pizarro in Peru.
Off Broadway
THE MAD SHOW. Against a background portrait of the grinning "Me Worry?" symbol, five cavorting performers convey a more or less Mad message through zany skits and impersonations. Thanks to the cast, the show is funnier than its material.
HOGAN'S GOAT bares the roots of American experience with its forceful evocation of the Irish character, customs and political power. Emigrants relocated in turn-of-the-century Brooklyn reflect Playwright William Alfred's ethnic truths.
CINEMA
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW.
A contradiction in terms: a truly faithful Biblical film made by a Communist, namely Italian Director Pier Paolo Pasolini, who employs only nonprofessional actors and uses a script based entirely on Holy Writ.
OTHELLO. A stagy film, starring Sir Laurence Olivier as the Moor. Although he seems pitted less against lago than the Bard, Olivier, blackface, West Indian accent and all, still manages to show why today he is the most versatile actor in the world.
THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX. How to make a little plane out of a big one that has crashed in the Sahara. Surprisingly well-paced and acted by an international troupe of pros including James Stewart, Hardy Kruger and Richard Attenborough, who struggle for survival against the sun, the sand and themselves.
THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD. A grainy, gritty double exposure of the spy racket on both sides of the Berlin Wall. Richard Burton is brilliant as a Western burned-out case; Oskar Werner is his preeminent prey from the East. Martin Ritt (Hud) is responsible for the near-perfect direction.
DEAR JOHN. Love is considerably more than sin-deep in this tour de force of erotic realism by Swedish Director Lars Magnus Lindgren. Jarl Kulle plays a sea captain, Christina Schollin the cafe waitress with whom he has a one-night affair that, oddly, ennobles them both.
LOVING COUPLES. Another Swedish showpiece handsomely fashioned by Film-Star-turned-Director Mai Zetterling. Antimarriage, antisex, anti-men. Couples is a long, loving closeup of three young women who come to grief because of the vain, stupid, corrupt men they cannot say no to.
RECORDS