and of the music halls.

The singers parenthesised an entirely different musical genre, classical guitar, played with remarkable dexterity by Luke Taylor. In a complex piece and with concentrated precision, he evoked a vision of sparkling water on hot summer’s day that was the reality outside of the theatre.

As Palace of Varieties was intended as lead in to Blue Fire’s Red Peppers, Noël Coward was never far away, and the musical offers were interspersed with excerpts from another of Coward’s cycle of the short plays from the Tonight at 8:30 series, Ways and Means. The main protagonists, heiress Stella Cartwright and her gambling-addicted husband Toby, were played by Mia Skytte-Jensen and Daniel Wain, described modestly by Wain (in his compere role) as the Olivier and Leigh of Twickenham… …like electricity, water, or telephone service, and subjecting it to more government oversight. Conservatives favor the current classification, established in the George W. Bush administration, in which the internet is an “information service” largely beyond the reach of FCC regulations.

BORROWED FROM PAUL TASSI AND TRUE/SLANT

Consumers are also awaiting decisions by the FCC and Congress later this year on the proposed merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable, which, if joined, would control more than 40 percent of the broadband internet market in the United States, and have a virtual monopoly in 19 of the 20 largest U.S. metropolitan areas.

The FCC’s new guidelines will reveal much about the future of the internet, and about whether the FCC will ultimately serve consumers, or serve the corporate lobbyists who increasingly write