ARTS In lieu of notice

KENNETH HURREN

A long-held belief that all work and no play makes a dull drama column puts a 'blight upon my natural elation at being appointed to review the theatre in these pages. Like a war correspondent between wars, or an obstetrician between births, I have no immediately visible means of support: there is a dismaying gap in the West End's calendar of first nights.

It comes about, of course, because London is brimming over with American tourists who are so transported by the idea of being able to go to the theatre without its costing them an arm and a leg that every box office in town is under siege. If no plays close, no plays can open; and even the worst of the current selection are contributing their ring- ing notes to an anvil chorus of cash registers, falling so sweetly on the ears of manage- ments that not all of them rushed to back Mr Donald Albery last week in his plea for a state subsidy to help the commercial play- houses modernise their amenities. (The de- faulters felt, I daresay, that this was a singu- larly tactless moment to bring out begging bowls which, in the circumstances, would be assured of as much public support as a flag day for betting shop proprietors.) Though this little wave of prosperity may encourage the less avaricious promoters to take out creaking floorboards and put in air-conditioning and fancier toilets, even without government grants, I'm not sure that it's a healthy thing for theatrical standards; and it is certainly depressing for a reviewer. One is suddenly aware of one's dependence even upon plays one might loathe (for brickbats cannot be made without straw). In fact, even to be caught using that evasive pronoun 'one' is depressing: it is a mealy- mouthed word that one uses when one really means 'I' and hasn't the humility to say so, but must try defensively to include unspeci- fied others in one's guilt.

Seasoned readers of drama notices must be aware, though, that every reviewer has his formula for coping with a 'blank' week.

Those who operate on rather gaudy expense accounts think nothing of flipping over to Paris or Berlin or New York to keep their congregations up-to-date on the international theatrical scene. All the world's their stage, and I cherish the memory of the audacity of one of these enviable globe-trotters who persuaded his editor, in an especially desper-

ate week, that his readers were agog for a report on the goings-on in the Finnish theatre. As it happens, I know a little gem of a playhouse in Acapulco, just a stone's throw from the beach ...

When the exotic ploy fails, a really dedi- cated man will slog out to the native hinter- lands to see what the reps are doing with last year's London successes: or. manfully denying the instinct that tells him he would he better off watching television, turn his attention to the shoestring groups that have lately proliferated in cheerless London attics and cellars, conceivably in attempted emula- tion of the off-off-Broadway movement in New York. Time was—in the heyday of the club theatres of the 'thirties and 'forties— when these enterprises afforded a vital plat- form for works of minority appeal. Perhaps they still do. The fact is, though, that the minorities these days are considerably more minor, invariably merely eccentric and not infrequently distinctly kinky. I am invited to one such where the promised entertainment will consist of sounds heard in total darkness, and it is suggested that I take my clothes off before joining the assembled auditors. Doubtless it is gravely remiss of me to pass up the experience. I was not so remiss as to decline as well the invitation to the Royal Court's Theatre Upstairs, which is both more professional and more rewarding than the other attics, and where they have thought- fully revived Christopher Hampton's first play, When Did You Last See My Mother? (written when he was eighteen), for easy comparison with his latest work, The Philan- thropist, in the main theatre.

It would have solved my problem nicely if I could have claimed to divine in the pren- tice item, without benefit of hindsight, the seeds of the sprightly talent that the Royal Court people have so successfully nurtured; but in truth I found the piece so wearyingly banal and melodramatic that I can report only my admiration for their greater percipi- ence.

The problem remains. Could I, perhaps, ride some frisky critical hobby-horse? The best mounts, I'm afraid, have dwindled frustratingly The case against the censor was a popular blood-boiler until two years ago, and the case for a national theatre used to be argued with relentless regularity: and how many there were who felt a pang of depriva- tion when those battles were won. Somehow the converse argument about censorship (was abolition wise after all?) cannot be pursued with quite the same fire when even a mild expression of doubt is apt to get a man a dismaying reputation as an incorrigible re- actionary.

A catalogue of beefs about what's wrong with the theatre has its temptations, but not, for heaven's sake, in the first week. The impression might get around that I was a querulous, malevolent fellow, when I am,

on the contrary, benign and kindly, my eagerness to praise matched only by my dis-

tress that the opportunity arises so rarely. A critic's manifesto. which might seem appro- priate at this moment. is a snare I resist with a caution born of an unwillingness to zip myself into the straitjacket of that consist- ency which, as Emerson remarked, is the hobgoblin of little minds.

Among the other dodges of reviewers bereft of new plays, the 'Hits Revisited' piece is familiar but rather sneaky. It is good for a few supplementary pairs of tickets and appeals chiefly to critics who have acquired new lady friends since the premieres and who are not deterred by the late Dorothy Parker's dictum that writing about the same play twice is like being sick on an empty stomach.

The 'Random Reflections' niece is fetch- ingly seductive. Thus: how I wish that all good-looking actresses were good actresses: to distinguish unerringly between a beauti- ful actress with a little talent. and a talented actress with a little beauty. demands a rare and cool objectivity that makes drama critic-

ism so bedevilling an exercise for all men under eighty. I'm afraid this sort of thing, inevitably introspective, might also turn out to be woefully self-indulgent.

Clearly this discursive soliloquy in quest of my own 'blank' week formula is getting nowhere. I coquetted lightly, at the outset, with an ingeniously lazy scheme to avoid the whole tortuous business. My plan was to begin by saying that, since Oh! Calcutta! is the theatrical topic that currently arouses the most feverish concern, I proposed in the public interest to enumerate all the compell- ing reasons why it should be seen. From there, the rest of the page was to be left blank. I wonder if I could possibly have got away with it?