Tynan's Progress SIR,—May I make three comments on Hilary Spurling's
piece last week?
1. Laurence Olivier played Brazen in The Recruit- ing Officer, not Plume.
2. Mrs Spurling says that, apart from one-actors, `the NT new plays have all been histotical- rhetorical. . . .' A strange category, I should have thought, in which to put Max Frisch's Andorra.
3. According to Mrs Spurling, the worst gap in the National Theatre's repertoire is the lack of plays by 'twentieth-century masters.' However you define a 'master,' this is a rather forgetful accu- sation, since more than half of the plays we have so far presented were written in the twentieth century—eight of them by living authors. KENNETH TYNAN Literary Manager
The National Theatre. London SEI
[Hilary Spurling writes: Point one taken, and I am sorry for the slip; point two is a matter of opinion; and on point three, by 'twentieth-century masters' I referred explicitly to Pirandello. Brecht and Beckett.]
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