29 MARCH 1975, Page 25

Wi l l

Waspe

The Young Vic company is off to Mexico next month to give performances of Frank Dunlop's production of Macbeth at Guanajuato, Guadalajara, Mexico City and San Miguel. The visit is under the auspices of the British Council, whose motives are not instantly comprehensible. The Dunlop version of Macbeth is hardly an ornament of the British stage (it was indifferently received in London, to say the least), nor — abridged and re-jigged as it is, with multiple Macbeths and Lady Macbeths — can it be said to be in any sense representative of the work of Shakespeare. It will doubtless be as intelligible to the Mexicans as a version of Maya, played in Spanish and with three different actresses in the leading role, would be to us. Waspe hopes, nevertheless, that the company will have a nice holiday.

No surprise

The BBC announces with pride that it has won all three of the awards given by the Writers' Guild of Great Britain for radio drama in 1974 (serial script, feature script and drama script). If anyone except the BBC was producing radio drama in Great Britain in 1974, it somehow escaped my attention.

Growing older

No actresses have such employment problems as those who have passed beyond ingenue roles but have not yet achieved middle-age. Diana Rigg is meeting the problem head-on — not by the usual method of clinging to vanishing youth, but by a premature advance into middle-age. Her next London stage appearance. I understand, will be as Shaw's Candida, and a search is in progress for a suitably boyishlooking Marshbanks.