Fifth Row Center

British theater critic Nightingale spent the 19831984 season in New York, writing a column for the Arts and Leisure section of the Sunday New York Times. In this journal of the experience, he reports on the productions of that season and reflects on the state of the New York theater. His gloomy prognosis is a familiar one: escalating costs and ticket prices (off Broadway as well as on) have resulted in conservatism on the parts of producers and audiences and have encouraged a theater that is narrow in scope and ""culturally marginal.'' Comparing the American stage with the far healthier (and state-subsidized) theater of his own country, Nightingale proposes ways in which a national institutional theater might be established here. Though his prose is sometimes marred by awkward journalistic shorthand, Nightingale's views are worth attending to. February 26