Falstaff .sx Theatre Royal , Glasgow .sx THIS may be Scottish Opera , but Ian Judge's new production of Verdi's comedy is decisively English .sx Rather as he did with The Comedy of Errors at Stratford last year , Judge has created a world loud with mid-20th-century references , which include the nudges , nods , winks and other slickly timed movements of a very English comic style .sx If it were needed , the programme offers a clue to this , though its allusions to Donald McGill are less apposite than the still from Terry and June .sx Falstaff becomes a Jimmy Edwards figure , and the Garter Inn a rather smart hotel , imposing certain standards of dress on its clientele :sx even Bardolph and Pistol are in plus fours , plaids and Argyll socks , while Falstaff's page is a Bunter lookalike , reading the Beano between items of tuck .sx Mark Thompson's set is excellent for the opening scene , but it provides no effective change of place for Ford's house or for the final scene in the park , where the chandeliers , mirror ceiling , doorways , grand staircase and upper landing all convey a dislocation way beyond the scope of this production .sx More consistently successful are Thompson's costumes , a lively parade of discords between Elizabethan and modern dress .sx Fenton , for instance , sports a royal-blue jacket halfway between doublet and blazer , while the other men have ruffs jammed over essentially 20th-century clothes ; and the women's crinolines are made up in 1950s prints .sx It is all very smart , bright and tidy .sx There is no trace of dirt and heedless self-indulgence slopping around this Falstaff , who is already such a trim old gent at the start that when he comes on attired for his wooing he has to appear wildly over the top .sx And at the start of Act III he is presented not drenched with river water but soaking himself in a hot bath .sx It seems unlikely that such a jolly codger represents any kind of sexual threat , and Gordon Sandison , perhaps bounded by the persona given him , does not suggest much physical energy on his singing , which is brushed in lightly and sometimes waywardly .sx There are , however , some excellent vocal performances .sx Steven Page is an excellent Ford , deeply dark in tone and absolutely emphatic ; he also nimbly cuts in the comic possibilities of his disguise without losing an ounce of his power and seriousness .sx John Mark Ainsley and Susannah Waters make a very personable pair of young lovers ; it is a delight to hear Ainsley's lovely singing in the theatre , and Waters , too , is youthfully fresh , with her own bubbling agility .sx Maria Prosperi , the only native Italian in the cast , uses the language more wittily and lusciously than her companions , and contributes a spirited , brightly sung Alice .sx But when everybody else in the cast is British , and when this is such a genial pantomime of a production , it does seem odd to hear it sung in Italian .sx John Mauceri in the pit seems to be trying to stimulate an orchestra which responds only with odd moments of beauty or elan sic !sx . PAUL GRIFFITHS .sx Yet there is method in it .sx Geoff Brown on Mel Gibson in Hamlet ; Freedom is Paradise , War Party and ( below ) Riff-Raff .sx So how does Mad Max cope with the Mad Dane ?sx An A for effort , at least .sx In preparation for Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet ( U , Odeon , Haymarket ) , Mel Gibson's Australian vowels were ruthlessly massaged by a voice trainer , now he enunciates the unreal clarity of a speaking clock .sx Still , you can always grasp the man's meaning :sx he shapes and projects Shakespeare's verse ( or what remains after Zeffirelli's scissors have cut their swath ) with consistent intelligence .sx The contours of Gibson's pin-up face are deliberately smudged by a beard , moustache , and close-cropped hair , though the blue eyes flash their usual magic .sx He mounts the soliloquies with fear , and , barring a tendency to rant and roll his eyes when excited , acquits himself well .sx His swordplay dances with force and wit .sx He is grave , anguished , tender , playful :sx all the things Hamlet should be .sx Yet , though Mel Gibson is never for one moment bad , almost everybody else in the cast is better .sx And for all his effort we never get under this Hamlet's skin ; he remains Mel , Prince of Hollywood , embarked on a worthy exercise .sx As with his Romeo and Juliet and the Taming of the Shrew films in the Sixties , Zeffirelli's mission is to bring the Bard - kicking and screaming if need be - before young , untutored audiences .sx Gibson is certainly the star to pull them in ; and for those with brief attention spans , the script prepared by Zeffirelli and Christopher De Vore , forges constant short-cuts to Shakespeare's highlights .sx There is no Fortinbras , no opening battlement scene , no words of advice to the players :sx everything is over within two hours and 15 minutes .sx Only the dustiest academic would rage over the lacunae :sx the director's task was to deliver a dynamic film , not a sacred relic .sx If anything , Zeffirelli is too timid .sx Gertrude's sexual temperature is raised to suit the spiky Glenn Close ( note the impassioned grapplings in the closet scene ) ; otherwise , the interpretations are tried and true .sx Here is Claudius , the pleasure-seeking King ( Alan Bates ) ; here is pottering , crafty Polonius ( Ian Holm , pottering a mite too much ) ; here is Ophelia ( Helen Bonham Carter ) , sweetly waifish one minute , hollow-eyed with lunacy the next .sx Best of all , here is the Ghost :sx Paul Scofield invests the role with a depth of despair that takes the film , however briefly , way beyond the dull realm of competence .sx Visually , Hamlet offers another mixed bag .sx For exteriors , Zeffirelli draws on three British castles , melded together ; as photographed by David Watkin , the setting easily looks cold and imprisoning enough to be Elsinore .sx Once characters step through the giant doors , they emerge into Shepperton Studios .sx Individual design details please :sx Hamlet delivers his 'fishmonger' taunts perched on a library shelf , forcing Polonius to mount a ladder , which Hamlet impishly pushes away .sx But too often sets appear over-dressed , with ugly items that obstinately resemble cheap stage props .sx By filming Hamlet , Zeffirelli and Mel Gibson are treading in famous footsteps :sx Olivier's and , in silent days , Sir Johnstone Forbes-Robertson's and Sarah Bernhardt's ( in 1900) .sx Ninety-one years later , Mel Gibson's Hamlet appears decent , slick , easily digestible :sx a fast-food Hamlet for the moment , without the stature to make it a Hamlet for the ages .sx Characters in the powerful Soviet film Freedom is paradise ( 12 , Renoir ) are society's cast-offs :sx delinquents , tucked away in a boarding school whose harsh regime prepares them for their probable adult destination - prison .sx The hero , played with sullen gravity by a 13-year-old handful called Volodya Kozyrev , escapes to make the huge trek from Soviet central Asia to Archangel in the far north , where his father serves a long prison sentence .sx Despite the title , the lad finds little sign of paradise on the road :sx just world-weary faces , scraping a living by fair or fowl means , and a few small kindnesses .sx The writer-director Sergei Bodrov , born in Khabarovsk , in the Soviet Union's far eastern corner , never knew his own father until he was 30 ; he makes the meeting between questing son and long-lost father the emotional high - point .sx Elsewhere , Bodrov paints a bleak portrait of Gorbachov's Soviet Union ( the film was made in 1989) :sx drab lives , class divisions , constant subservience to the state police .sx At first the narrative is compressed too tightly ( the film lasts 75 minutes ) but once Bodrov's hero begins his trek north the scenes expand , the images blossom , and the desolate story of an urchin at large in a loveless world grips the audience by the throat .sx For those worried about value for money , Freedom is Paradise is supported by Irene Jouannet's Finale , a precious , 14-minute French short inspired by an incident in Nijinsky's long mental decline .sx Shot in 1987 , released in America in 1989 :sx Franc Roddams War Party ( 18 , Cannon Haymarket ) has taken its time .sx The film emerges after Dances With Wolves pushed Native Americans and their plight high up in the public consciousness .sx War Party - no preening epic this , but watchable screen fodder - offers a contemporary variation .sx During a re-enacted battle between Indians and cavalry , staged to boost a depressed Montana town , a hot-headed white settles an old score by shooting an Indian youth dead .sx This launches a spiral of violence and racist attacks ; with blood on their hands , the dead Indian's pals head for the hills and rediscover their ethnic identity .sx War Party makes a stab at grappling with Indian culture , and gathers authentic Native Americans to support brat - packers Billy Wirth and Kevin Dillon .sx Yet his is basically a pursuit movie in disguise :sx the lads retreat , a posse sets out , a helicopter is brought down ( with bow and arrow ) , an Indian is scalped , and so it goes on .sx Fully persuaded without reason .sx In the disconcerting event that I find myself on a desert island with nothing but a gramophone and a few choice musical moments for company , I shall certainly hope that the cymbal clash of Bruckner's Seventh Symphony is among them .sx Not the entire gargantuan symphony :sx life is short , even on a desert island .sx Just that cymbal clash , the tinkle from the triangle player that accompanies it , and the glorious Adagio that surrounds it .sx Why ?sx Because it is irrational , extravagant , arguably unnecessary - and utterly heartwarming .sx So it would serve to remind me of what the art I left behind is all about .sx There is no rationality in making two skilled musicians sit motionless for 80 minutes in order to play one note each .sx Especially the triangle player :sx the cymbal wielder can at least flesh out his performance with a few extrovert twirls of wrists and forearms .sx It certainly is not economical .sx An accountant would chop them , particularly if he knew what some scholars believe :sx that Bruckner never actually approved this cymbal clash .sx Most accountants don't know this , thank goodness :sx they already have enough to say in running the music business .sx Conductors , who do know , realise that this great movement - which rises on waves of noble sequences from tragedy to something approaching transcendental triumph - demands , at its peak , the sheer physicality of metal clashing metal .sx Man cannot live by strings and woodwind alone .sx This is music's equivalent of a scoring footballer's exultant punch in the air .sx In the Festival Hall on Monday that moment , and what followed , certainly spoke in heroic terms .sx Bernard Haitink's marvellous interpretation , which managed to combine a sense of spaciousness and long-term purpose with moments of high drama , was the more remarkable for being achieved with an orchestra , the Dresden Staatskapelle , that hardly dazzled with technique .sx The wind sections were not especially well blended ; the strings beefy but only intermittently shimmering .sx Indeed , the stolid performance of Mozart's 'Haffner' Symphony that preceded the Bruckner had raised forebodings .sx But then Haitink seemed to grip the performers in the fist made by his own vision and intense concentration , as so often happens when he is unshackled from Covent Garden and allowed to roam the epic symphonic fields that are his natural terrain .sx The way in which his subtle speed variations and mature , nonsensational approach benefit the flow of Bruckner's vast paragraphs is easy to fathom .sx But how this seemingly placid Dutchman , exuding reason and moderation , can suddenly inject such searing anger into , of all things , a lugubrious passage for Wagner tubas :sx that is a wonderful mystery , and long may it continue to be so .sx On the following night this unofficial celebration of Austro-Germanic heavy-weights continued with an orchestra on much classier form :sx the London Philharmonic , responding superbly to the sophisticated demands of Christoph von Dohn a nyi .sx This was a courageous programme :sx to open a Festival Hall concert with the sparse cries and whispers of Webern's ten-minute Symphony , Op 21 , is - in audience-stirring terms - like attempting to set fire to damp leaves .sx But the orchestra overcame an initial tentativeness ( no music exposes individual players so cruelly ) and later produced a vividly characterised , immaculately precise account of Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces .sx Emanuel Ax glided elegantly through Beethoven's Second Piano Concerto , and the concert ended with a muscular , highly organised account of Schumann's Fourth Symphony , lacking only the occasional poetic reverie .sx Dohn a nyi is a ferociously intelligent conductor but not , one suspects , a dreamer .sx RICHARD MORRISON .sx