Will Waspe's Whispers
An intriguing situation is in the making over there on the South Bank when the National Theatre moves into its own new home about eighteen months from now. The National will, of course, be vacating the Old Vic, which the company has occupied for the last ten years by arrangement with the governors thereof — and what will then happen to that famed old playhouse?
It has been mentioned as a possible auditorium for the Young Vic. The Royal Opera would not be averse to adapting it as a subsidiary to Covent Garden. My information is that neither of these possibilities finds much favour with the Old Vic governors or with Mr Alfred Francis, their former chairman, whose advice will be influential in the eventual decision.
There is a feeling in these quarters that there should be another Old Vic company, on much the same lines as that originally set up by the late Lilian Baylis and disbanded when the National came into being. If that were to be revived, with a strong enough team of actors and especially under a distinguished artistic director with appropriate support from the Arts Council, it would certainly keep the National and Peter Hall on their toes. If I may be mischievous, one eminently qualified man who will find himself at a loose end at just the right time is, of course, Lord Olivier.
Guessing game
Fay Weldon, the advertising copywriter (of "Happiness is egg-shaped" etc) who has become a prolific television playwright, once told me that, while the painful marital dramas for which she is renowned were fictional, the characters in general were not. Her practice is (or was) to look around at people she knew well, and try to imagine their behaviour under the stresses of her invented situations.
I begin to suspect that Philip Mackie works in the same way — e.g. his recent series, The Organisation, whose characters had many of his former associates at Granada feeling hot under the collar. So whom did Mackie have in mind as the central figure in his play, A Marriage (ITV last Sunday)? The fellow was a journalist with a highly aphoristic turn of phrase who appeared frequently as a television pundit but whose main occupation was attending trendy occasions in pursuit of material for his personalised column in a Sunday newspaper. No prizes.
Comments published in this column regarding the ending of Ronald Hayman's contract as director of Patricia Welles's play, The Lottery, at the Hampstead Theatre Club have not proved to be factual and we regret that they may have been read as a criticism of Miss Welles. We are glad to apologise to her and to withdraw the comments made.
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