Nothing left to win .sx Trials of an Expert Witness :sx Tales of Clinical Neurology and the Law .sx by Harold L Klawans .sx Anne Smith .sx Poor Mrs Sherman .sx She went to hospital for plastic surgery to have an ulcer removed from her ear .sx The anaesthetist included morphine in her pre-med .sx She suffered from emphysema .sx Morphine and emphysema do not mix .sx By the time the porter had wheeled her to the operating theatre and waved her a blithe goodbye , she was dead .sx A nurse noticed .sx Sherman was resuscitated .sx But her lungs could not cope and the task of keeping her alive was passed over to the respirator .sx The hospital re-trained its porters so that they might more readily spot the difference when the odd patient died on the trolley - all but the one who had failed to notice that poor Sherman had wheezed her last .sx He was untrainable , so they made him a message-boy .sx One day Sherman asked for a television set in her room .sx This same porter delivered it while she was asleep .sx Quietly , he pulled out one of the plugs beside her bed and replaced it with the television plug .sx In doing so , he cut off her respirator .sx Poor Sherman died after all .sx Her family's claim against the hospital was settled out of court .sx Trials of an Expert Witness covers 19 cases such as this from America , each one as fascinating and alarming as the last .sx Against Richardson's Law , which states that every doctor is ready to swear that every other doctor is an excellent physician , Klawans insists on high standards in his profession :sx " Belief in the right of a patient to have legal recourse for an injury resulting from malpractice is like belief in God .sx " .sx The trouble is , that when the time comes to sue in these cases , you have already lost .sx As did Sherman , or Mrs Greengrass , who was left waiting for the obstetrician who had prescribed glucose drips to keep her going until he was free ; he went home and forgot her , and she became a vegetable with brain damage caused by sodium deficiency .sx Or Tom Thompson III who had a tumour which made him lame , impotent and incontinent , but who was diagnosed as having amyotrophic lateral sclerosis .sx By the time the correct diagnosis was made and the benign tumour removed , he was left lame , incontinent and impotent for life .sx " Science moves forward , " is Klawans's comment to a lawyer who asks him to repeat his successful testimony that an accident can precipitate multiple sclerosis ; they thought it could then , they know it cannot now .sx He does not go into the ethics of this ; it's all in the game , he says .sx That takes a kind of courage as does his examination of Ezra Pound's case , inspired by a poem by Dannie Abse , Pound was not mad , just " crazy like a fox " .sx Nor was the man who shot the gay rights campaigner Harvey Milk , who claimed to have been driven temporarily nuts by the overconsumption of Twinkie bars .sx Unlike the man who murdered in his sleep , who was deemed to be irresponsible through " sleep drunkenness " , a theory borne out by the case of Colonel Culpeper , who shot a guardsman in similar circumstances in 1686 .sx Although the human factor is clearly present in all these cases , either in the attitude and behaviour of the patient or in the lawyers' cynical manipulations , it is absent from Klawan's book in the most important way .sx A science moves forward , cases cease to be persons .sx A little fleshing-out round the neurology would have gone a long way .sx Festivals blessed by mixed Marriages .sx Hugh Canning on two traditional but entirely different Figaro productions .sx The Mozart year gets into full swing as the summer opera festivals burst into action .sx Last week Glyndebourne opened its first all-Mozart season since the 1956 bicentenary of its favourite composer's birth , appropriately with a revival of the first opera ever performed there in 1934 , Le nozze di Figaro , this time in Sir Peter Hall's 1989 production .sx This month , too , Jonathan Miller unveiled his new Figaro at the Vienna Festival , to rapturous applause and high critical praise .sx Miller is long acquainted with the inhabitants of the castle of Aguas Frescas near Seville , since he directed Beaumarchais's sic !sx comedy for the National Theatre at the Old Vic in 1974 and his elegant , cool , very French production of Mozart's opera has become a staple of the repertoire at the London Coliseum .sx His latest thoughts on the Mozart opera make a fascinating comparison with those of Hall .sx This Glyndebourne revival is restaged by Stephen Medcalf , producer of the Opera 80 Magic Flute I wrote about last week , and though there is certainly more theatrical life in it now , it lacks the close focus in the complex relationship within the Almaviva household which mark Miller's staging .sx Where the Hall production suffers from lazy , commonplace naturalism , in John Gunter's insipid and already tatty-looking sets , the new Miller mise-en-sc e-grave nes has a brilliant young designer in Peter J Davison , who transports us from the down-at-heel backstairs milieu to the Countess's boudoir with magical use of a revolve .sx Later , in the middle of Act IV , Davison takes us instantly from the great hall to the exterior of the palace for the garden scene .sx Both transformations are stunning coups de th e a-circ tre , whereby Figaro becomes the two-part opera in four acts its musical structure suggests it is and the drama moves inexorably towards the great crisis of the denouement .sx Not only is Davison's set a miracle of engineering , but it looks ravishing , inspired by the bourgeois painting of Chardin , rather than the cut-price Boucher on offer at Glyndebourne .sx Miller underplays the revolutionary aspect of the drama - as Mozart and Da Ponte necessarily did in order to get the opera on at all in 1786 - so there is no blunderbuss - brandishing peasantry bursting into the place as at Glyndebourne .sx Instead , Miller , aided by Davison's sets and the beautifully detailed , historically researched costume designs of James Acheson , evokes an ancien regime not yet in terminal decline , but getting there .sx The Countess's pinkwashed walls need a new coat of paint , the plasterwork is crumbling and the old social distinctions are gradually breaking down .sx The older members of the Count's retinue are deferential , while the young girls know and exploit his sexual proclivities .sx Susanna and Barbarina are not the only women who look for social advancement .sx By concentrating on the interplay of the characters without any specific dialectic or concept , Miller paradoxically underlines the eternal modernity of Figaro .sx In Vienna's intimate Theater an der Wien , the polemical German director Ruth Berghaus was in the audience , and she must have been dismayed by Miller's traditional approach .sx But it revealed more about the psychology of the characters than any intellectual production I have seen .sx The Viennese audience was overjoyed , too , not to have any ideology rammed down their throats in their favourite opera .sx There is not much ideology behind the Hall show , but neither is there Miller's illumination of character and situation .sx In retrospect , I wish Miller could have had the Glyndebourne cast , which has a mature and familiar Figaro in Alan Opie , but otherwise very young principals , too young in the Case of Susan Bickley's Marcellina who could never be this Figaro's mother .sx In Vienna , Miller had grand opera stars for the Almavivas , the blossoming American soprano Cheryl Studer and veteran Italian bass , Ruggero Raimondi , and however effectively they suppressed their super-egos in favour of a close-knit ensemble , Glyndebourne's youthful Count and Countess , Jeffrey Black and Gunnel Bohmann , were both vocally and histrionically more affecting .sx Bohmann has vastly improved her form since the opening night in 1989 and presents the Countess , rightly in my view , as a young wife deeply anxious about the state of her marriage , rather than the tragedy queen of many large-house productions .sx Studer steers clear of that , but only just , and she sings with an amplitude of tone and breadth of phrasing turning her two big numbers into show - stoppers .sx Vocally , Raimondi's Count was a big surprise , for his large Italianate bass-baritone can sound lugubrious in Verdi let alone Mozart , but here he was elegance itself and he characterised the noble skirt-lifter as a frustrated , satyr-like buffoon rather than the glowering villain suggested by his recording of the part .sx Both companies field fine Cherubinos :sx Gabrielle Sima in Vienna is a charming soprano paggio in the Jurinac mould who deserves to be seen at Covent Garden , while Glyndebourne's Marianne Rohrholm , though not so well-endowed vocally , is a real charmer .sx The high-light of the production for me is the moment she scarpers when Barbarina suggests marriage .sx Both productions are , quite properly , dominated by their Figaro and Susanna , and it is a measure of the opera's infinite variety that both couples are entirely different and both work triumphantly .sx Vienna pairs a fine young Italian Figaro , Lucio Gallo , who will sing in the Covent Garden production next season , with the still youthful-looking , but seasoned Susanna of Marie McLaughlin , while at Glyndebourne the reverse is the case .sx If I reserve special praise , it is for the quite wonderful Susanna of Alison Hagley at Glyndebourne , deservedly promoted from Barbarina in 1989 .sx Hagley registers every nuance of da Ponte's detailed expression marks - " ironically" , " maliciously " and so on - and deploys a creamy lyric soprano which suggests the promise of the young Kiri Te Kanawa .sx Her Act IV aria was the crowning moment of her performance as her soprano intertwined erotically with the wind soloists of the Age of Enlightenment orchestra .sx It is in the orchestral performance where the two productions go entirely separate ways .sx At Glyndebourne , Andrew Davis conducts period instruments in a fast and furiously theatrical account of the opera , while in Vienna Claudio Abbado conducts the luxuriously upholstered State Opera Orchestra ( alias the Vienna Philharmonic) .sx Abbado is far from stately , though , and his brilliant conducting of the two great finales recalled the inexorable momentum of the classic 1956 Erich Kleiber recording with the same band .sx At Glyndebourne , Davis seems to have solved all the problems Simon Rattle encountered when the production was new .sx This bodes well for the new Rattle/Trevor Nunn Cosi fan tutte which opened on Friday and about which I will write next week .sx Murder , melodrama and mistaken identity .sx IAIN JOHNSTONE on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and the week's releases .sx It was perhaps fortuitous for Tom Stoppard that the film of his 1967 play , Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead ( Curzon West End et al , Pg ) , was delayed by Sean Connery's withdrawal from the project .sx A working knowledge of Hamlet is essential to one's enjoyment of the comedy , and until this year movie - buffs had to rely on Laurence Olivier's version , in which Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are absent .sx Fortunately , Mel Gibson has now ridden to the rescue and the plot point has been restored , with the Wittenberg students unwittingly carrying Hamlet's death warrant to England .sx In Gibson's Hamlet , as in nearly every version since the Stoppard play , the expression of royal gratitude to the pair - King Claudius :sx " Thanks , Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern " ; Queen Gertrude :sx " Thanks , Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz " - has the emphasis of the consort correcting the monarch , although there is no stage direction to that effect .sx Gertrude could well have reversed the names out of pure politeness .sx But confusion of identity is the precise target of Stoppard's humour .sx In the title roles he has even cast two actors , Gary Oldman and Tim Roth , who could almost pass for one other .sx Not even Rosencrantz is sure whether he is Rosencrantz or Guildenstern , so how can the pair expect anyone else to distinguish them ?sx What both do know is that they provide itinerant irrelevance .sx Hamlet greets them warmly as good friends but shares not a single student reminiscence with them ; only Rosencrantz's retort to his request for news - " None , my lord , but that the world's grown honest " - suggests there might be ironic depths to the man , which Shakespeare was unprepared to plumb .sx Stoppard has taken liberties with his own work to put in on film , but it still gets off to an uncertain start .sx The gag about the spun coin always landing heads-up builds brilliantly on the stage but fails to find the same crescendo in the film .sx