EVERY NIGHT'S A FESTIVAL

You might well decline the invitational title and remember Mr. Gardner's jovial Boysie Oakes continuity with nostalgia — this is an insistently obvious backstage novel of a smaller than Stratford repertory theatre which Douglas Silver is asked to resuscitate. He signs up a Sammy Davis type Joe Thomas ("Me doing Shakespeare. A gas") as Othello, and also a lovely "spade dolly" Carol Evans with whom he's been performing elsewhere — she's formidable in bed. Much to the concern of his wife, also an actress, Jen — "Could a few loving fucks be a betrayal?" He tries to make up for it by taking her to Prunier's. On this goes through the whole business of staging a production and delivering a success but it's not really entertaining unless you justify it in terms of that equal pound of flesh.