Will Waspe
Patrons of Sadler's Wells Theatre during the current season by the English Opera Group and the Royal Ballet could be forgiven for imagining that the questionnaire they are handed on entering — neatly slanted, it seems to Waspe, to produce public support for moving SW operations to the Old Vic when the National Theatre eventually vacates — is the idea of the management. Wells administrator Douglas Craig, anxious to contradict such a sinister impression, feels bravely impelled to go on-stage nightly to explain that it is none of his doing but that of the Arts Council who actually commissioned the questionnaire from Wynne Godley, director of the Department of Applied Economics at Cambridge.
A curious business, indicating disturbingly that the Council is rather more than toying with the notion of killing two birds with one stone, getting rid of the Wells and settling the future of the Old Vic.
Indiscreet
Another current embarrassment to the Wells, I hear, is the behaviour of dance students from The Place, who have the privilege of complimentary seats for Royal Ballet performances and have been asking for them at the box office in such loudly imperious tones that paying customers in the queue are gravely disaffected. The Place people have been sharply requested to discipline their striplings on pain of having the privilege withdrawn.
Mercurial
Waspe applauds the enterprise of artist Michael Heard in booking the Alpine Gallery in South Audley Street to mount his own show next week, but deplores the situation that drove him to It. Twenty years a painter, Heard was signed up some years ago by Cork Street's Mercury Gallery with lavish assurances as to his future promotion. Alas, it quickly transpired that his abstract landscapes were no longer the Cork Street vogue and Heard's sole benefit from the Mercury connection has been inclusion in a two-man show three or four years ago, to which the gallery omitted even to arrange a private view.
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