Film Virtues in A Taste of Honey .sx Mr. Richardson's Skilful Direction .sx The film version of Miss Shelagh Delaney's play A Taste of Honey opens at the Leicester Square Theatre tomorrow .sx It has been produced and directed by Mr. Tony Richardson , who is also part-author with Miss Delaney of the script , and the great advantages to be derived from this unity of conception and control are everywhere apparent .sx This is not a filmed play .sx It has been conceived throughout in terms of the cinema , and again and again it is the visual qualities of the story , and the marriage of the central characters to their background , which bring the film so vividly to life .sx In Fanny , which also has its premiere tomorrow , the director , Mr. Joshua Logan , attempted but failed to create the atmosphere of a city .sx In A Taste of Honey Mr. Richardson has taken a town in the industrial North of England and has made it live .sx The shabby streets and wet pavements , the school play-grounds , the public monuments and the rubbish strewn canals- even the worn head-stones in the churchyard , " sacred to the memory " - are seen as an integral part of the story .sx The background is always alive and always changing ; but the visual image is in keeping with the spoken word .sx We accept implicitly that these characters have grown naturally and inevitably from out of these surroundings .sx Against this industrial setting Mr. Richardson has told Miss Delaney's story .sx Its faults are still apparent .sx The plot is still shapeless and inconclusive- indeed it is little more than an anecdote of city life , with a beginning but no end- and the characters often seem to lack consistency .sx But there is heart in the telling , and an intense realism in the situation .sx A young girl lives in a single dingy room with her slatternly , promiscuous mother .sx In such surroundings she learns sex is something sordid , and when she experiences it for the first time herself it is incoherently , clumsily , but half shyly and half inquisitively .sx As is the case in Fanny her first lover is a sailor who leaves her to bear his child and sails away .sx In Fanny the pregnant girl is befriended by an old man .sx Here it is a young homosexual , estranged from women but yet moved by a strong maternal instinct to the unborn child as much as to the expectant mother , who acts as a protector and comforter to her in her hour of need .sx He shares her room and gives her his forlorn gift of companionship and sympathy- " you need someone to love you while you are looking for someone to " .sx Miss Dora Bryan plays the mother as a flamboyant , down-to-earth sensualist who lacks perception but is not altogether without heart .sx Mr. Murray Melvin is the homosexual , his long lugubrious face reflecting a hidden and unexpressed compassion .sx Miss Rita Tushingham is the girl .sx It is always difficult when assessing a moving and eloquent performance by a young and immature screen actress to judge the extent to which her acting has been inspired by skilled and sensitive direction .sx Mr. Richardson has left his stamp so clearly on the rest of this film that some credit must be given to him ; but here is undeniably a performance of surprising range and deep emotion , reflected in the face of an ordinary schoolgirl that is seemingly without make-up but is illuminated by a wonderful pair of eyes .sx It is Mr. Richardson's great gift that he can show a face in close-up and reveal the thoughts of the mind without a word being spoken .sx This he does repeatedly in this film , especially with Miss Tushingham .sx CONCERTOS ENLIVEN PROGRAMME .sx Apart from Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet fantasy overture , last night's Prom was entirely devoted to twentieth-century music , with two piano concertos by Alan Rawsthorne and Prokofiev ( each composer's No .sx 1 in the medium ) to enliven both halves of the programme .sx The two works are true bravura concertos lying within the grasp only of players of virtuoso technique ; they are alike , too , in placing far more emphasis on crisply sparkling extravert brilliance than on inwardness of feeling though admittedly Rawsthorne briefly becomes more searching in his beautiful central chaconne .sx The soloist , Miss Moura Lympany , could not have been better chosen , for she has the clear-cut agility and vivacity of musicianship necessary for this kind of music , and temperamentally does not suffer from any temptation to delve more deeply into the notes than they warrant .sx On their own , the B.B.C. Symphony Orchestra and Sir Malcolm Sargent went to the rescue of " Pohjola's " , one of Sibelius's offspring now very much on the shelf .sx This is vividly scored but essentially naive programme music , perhaps more likely to appeal on home ground where the Kalevala is as real as the Bible .sx Sir Malcolm Sargent and the orchestra made every point with graphic clarity , and almost the same was true of Vaughan Williams's sixth symphony , which stood as the centrepiece of the programme .sx The exception was the finale of the symphony , which was played just a shade too fast and not quite insubstantially enough to convey the full , hollow horror of its implications- the globe's vast desolation after the extinction of all human life .sx Miss Dodie Smith Provides for Kitchen Sink .sx FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT .sx LIVERPOOL , SEPT .sx 12 .sx In her latest play , launched here last night , Miss Dodie Smith , accepting the challenge of the times , has made room for a kitchen sink .sx Its presence does nothing to sour these new arrivals among the author's brood of brain children .sx Or should one call them heart children ?sx All their hearts are in the right place , and they run true and sweet to family form .sx There is even an older and more formidable challenge than the sink itself to test their fundamental niceness , for this basement kitchen of an old house in a London square is also the dining room of a boarding establishment run by an amiable and fluttery spinster .sx All her guests , whatever their age , lend a hand with the washing up ( which is frequent ) with almost as much enjoyment as if at last some miraculous detergent were being advertised in the live theatre .sx No one is cantankerous , there are no petty jealousies or mutual animosities .sx Who but Miss Dodie Smith would have thought boarding house comedy could be written without them ?sx This boarding house has a pronounced list to stageward .sx It accommodates young members of the profession and also a middle-aged actor manque@2 who has been out of touch with the world for 20 years and is at first suspected of having been serving a prison sentence .sx Actually he has been caring for his invalid but equally histrionic wife who has died and left him free to fulfil , with her blessing , his long thwarted ambition .sx When he has been gently de-hammed for the modern stage by a young actress who is his fellow-lodger he does land a contract .sx In the meanwhile we watch him perform marvels of cooking and , generally at the same time , listen to him delivering the most purple and familiar patches of Shakespeare .sx There are a pair of pathetic fuddy-duddies who have parted with their house because they have had " a good offer " for it , and a hypochondriacal old bachelor who proposes to the gentle proprietress , but is not accepted until she has made the surprising confession that she , unlike her once suspected guest , has really been to prison .sx This is Miss Smith's highest flight of imagination ; the offence was the absentminded theft of a library book for which in her youth the otherwise innocent Miss Edie got 14 days without the option .sx The inclusion of a titled " char " on the establishment is perhaps the most deliberately modern touch .sx Miss Jennifer Stirling plays Miss Edie with great skill and charm and Mr. Willard Stoker effectively coordinates a good cast .sx Rare Acting in Betti Play .sx A Quietly Effective Production .sx Oxford Playhouse :sx Irene .sx Directed by BRYAN STONEHOUSE .sx FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT .sx OXFORD , Sept .sx 12 .sx Irene is not perhaps one of Betti's masterpieces , but it is a splendidly efficient play , constructed with sure instinct for theatrical effect which never seemed to let this dramatist down .sx The background is that rough , raw , savage land of southern Italy which Betti explored in a number of plays .sx Here it is combined with another theme dear to his heart , the workings of justice .sx A nice , simple sergeant of the Carabinieri arrives in a strange village at night to investigate some irregularities concerning the town clerk .sx By chance he lights first of all upon the clerk's house , stays there for the night and becomes disturbingly involved with the clerk , his faded , pretentious wife and , particularly , his beautiful crippled daughter , Irene .sx The next morning he hears the evidence against his erstwhile host , and learns of the bitter enmity in which the mayor and the rest hold him .sx Where does the truth lie ?sx How far can the sergeant , caught between his feelings for Irene and her family on the one hand and the evidence and the veiled blackmail of the mayor on the other reach a fair and unbiased decision ?sx Especially when he learns that the girl , whom he believed pure and innocent , is in fact the local prostitute .sx Despite this she still retains a strange innocence , somewhere between that of the idiot and that of the saint , which sets up violent and contradictory emotions in those who visit her as well as in the sergeant :sx they want her to go and yet they want her to stay ; he does not know until almost too late whether he loves her or loathes her .sx Arguably , the dramatist has committed a technical error in allowing Irene to speak for herself ; we would be altogether clearer in our minds about her if she remained a flawed but beautiful enigma , seen but not heard .sx However , Miss Pinkie Johnstone makes her few brief scenes effective , and Mr. Dinsdale Landen , in the longest and most exacting role , that of the sergeant , gives a performance of rare intelligence and restrained power .sx Mr. Bryan Stonehouse's production is quietly effective , giving full value to the formal elements of Betti's writing without over-emphasizing them .sx A MORALITY PLAY ON AMBITION .sx Last night's play in the " Play of the Week " series on independent television , Then We Fall , by Mr. Paul Ferris , was a morality on the not unfamiliar theme of the destructive power of unbridled ambition .sx It went , perhaps , some distance beyond most treatments of its subject by attempting to generate a melodramatic inevitability which left its central character and the world around him in complete , unredeemable desolation .sx We could , perhaps , say whether or not the attempt succeeded if we had a little more faith in the way in which Mr. Ferris manipulated his characters .sx Mervyn Morris abandons his job as a pilot in a Welsh seaport , finds a position with the local paper , treads underfoot everyone , especially his wife , with whom he deals :sx his wife leaves him for the paper's shy , gentle editor .sx At which he prevails upon his father-in-law , a miserly , fanatical Welsh nationalist , to murder the editor for him .sx No suspicions are aroused but no problems are solved for he loses his job because , at the moment of the murder , he is standing in front of television cameras and , with his nerves on edge , talking tactlessly .sx Mr. William Lucas ( Morris ) is always insensitively pushing , Miss Sheila Allen his wife , always palely appealing , Mr. James Maxwell , the editor , always comically abashed by the events , and Mr. Aubrey Richards , the father-in-law , always comically grotesque ; they were not asked to modulate from their set moods but played with proper efficiency and , in the case of Mr. Richards , with lavish and suitably gaudy colour .sx Only Mr. Lucas's actions , therefore , arose explicably from appreciable motives .sx The rest , one feels , were driven to effective action by the author in spite of the ineffectuality with which he had endowed them .sx One hopes that he is not asking us to believe that , because of their odd accents , they act oddly like the queer foreigners of tradition .sx