King Lear, with Louis Calhern in the title role, has been successfully, if elaborately, revived. (National).

Less attractive dramatic works include Philip Barry's Second Threshold and Louis Vernuil's Affairs of State, starring Celeste Holm. (Morosco and Music Box, respectively).

Ring Around the Moon, Jean Anouilh's comedy, is still at the Martin Beck.

Another first-rate comedy is Bell, Book and Candle, a farce about sorcery in Manhattan starring Lill Palmer and Rex Harrison. (Ethel Barrymore).

One of the best of the current comedies is critic Wolcott Gibbs' Season in the Sun, a clever farce about life on New York's Fire Island. (Cort).

Equally funny is a revival of Hecht and MacArthur's Twentieth Century, starring Jose Ferrer and Gloria Swanson. (Fulton).

Current standbys include The Cocktail Party, The Happy Time, and Member of the Wedding. All three are still definitely worth seeing. The Cocktail Party, by T. S. Eliot '10, is at he Henry Miller; The Happy Time, a portrait of a French-Canadian family, at the Plymouth, and Member of the Wedding, with Etnel Waters, Julie Harris, and Brandon de Wilde, at the Empire.

All shows nightly except Sunday, except Peep Show, which takes Monday off; and all give Saturday matinees.

Cinema

New York's movie houses offer little more than Boston's except in the foreign line, where there is an excellent selection, and a small squad of high-budget Hollywood openings.

Ways of Love, which apparently will never slip into vigilant Boston, has escaped from a trigger-happy censor and is now running with all three superb sections at the Paris, 58th and Fifth. If Cardinal Spellman make as much progress in New York as he has here, this may be nearly the last chance to see it in the East.

Jean Cocteau's Orpheus winds up a long run at the 55th Street Playhouse (near Seventh). Replete with international awards, often imaginative symbolism, and sometimes stunning originality, this adaptation of the Greek legend to modern dress and psychology has added considerably to the reputation of France's jack-of-all-arts.

In its second month at the Little Cine Met, Sixth at 39th, Manon features Cecile Aubry and a fairly clumsy modernization of the French classic, Manon Lescaut.

From Italy comes Bitter Rice, a tale of passion starring Sylvana Mangano and the Po valley, at the World, 49th and Seventh.

Vittorio DeSica's prize-laden Bicycle Thief is undergoing revival at the Greenwich, 12th and Seventh, coupled with Robert J. Flaherty's famous Tabu.