Jennifer Reichardt, 47, a legal executive, died after the collision near St Helens, Merseyside, last year. Musically, he has rendered it as a chamber piece but the show is stranded in the bombast of the space.. A WOMAN who died after her car was involved in a head-on collision may have been the first motorist to be killed by the inflation of a driver’s airbag, an inquest was told yesterday. Similarly, Simon Day’s pompous Maximilian seizes his comedy with delicious aplomb.Caird’s version is more faithful to Voltaire’s ideas, but the plodding rhythm too often fails to take fire dramatically. She grabs her big scene where she lists her suffering every indignity known to womankind with tremendously engaging zest and then goes one further by launching into a splendidly assured and terrifically funny rendition of “I Am Easily Assimilated”. John Napier’s spare designs throw the focus onto the actors.They use Nicholas Nickelby-style techniques whipping up different atmospheres across Europe from drowning at sea to a grand ball in Venice, assisted by endless gusts of smoke to enhance Paul Pyant’s lighting.Beverley Klein brings the house down as the ill-used Old Lady. But even the strength of this new thread cannot bind the show together.There are several pluses, notably Caird’s use of the National’s ensemble company.

Everyone from Lillian Hellman to John Wells via Dorothy Parker and Stephen Sondheim has tried to turn this extravagant but famously problematic musical dramatisation of Voltaire into a viable piece of theatre.Now the National Theatre has come up with a “new” book written and directed by John Caird, assisted by Trevor Nunn.When the National’s thin-sounding 14-piece band strikes up the famous overture your spirits sink. It is inward looking, it is a blame culture, and it does the name of the Prison Service no good.”. Candide

National Theatre
LondonIN THE history of musicals, there has scarcely been a richer, bolder, wittier or more majestic score than Leonard Bernstein’s for his glorious but unwieldy. Publishing his annual report, Sir David Ramsbotham said the Prison Service was bedevilled by the premise that prisoners were “subordinates”.
New prison officers fired with enthusiasm for working positively with inmates are quickly put in their place by senior colleagues, who exert “domination and intimidation, a pernicious way of influencing colleagues”, Sir David said.In what will be seen by some as a challenge to the prison chiefs to crack down on the Prison Officers’ Association, Sir David called on Martin Narey, the new director-general of the Prison Service, to challenge the entrenched staff attitude at many prisons.He said: “I suggest to Mr Narey that no factor will better enable him to respond to the Home Secretary’s objectives than a determined and sustained attack on the old culture, wherever it manifests itself. General practice could be fragmented, destabilised and even privatised.”.

YOUNG PRISON officers who try to show a caring attitude towards prisoners are the subject of “domination and intimidation” by cynical older colleagues, the Chief Inspector of Prisons said yesterday. Simon Fradd, deputy chairman of the GPs’ committee, said the future of general practice was threatened “GPs will no longer be co-ordinating everything. If you take over large chunks of the GPs’ work it undermines the core service they provide and breaks the doctor-patient relationship. “It could perhaps spell the end of the family doctor.”Christine Hancock, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said nurses were being given extra authority to help patients to treat themselves.