Will Waspe's Whispers
Mr Peter Craig-Raymond runs a service for actors called Professional Casting Report — a name neatly chosen, it would seem, so that both he and it can be known as PCR. What it does is supply Equity members with news of parts available in forthcoming plays, films and TV — which enables actors to seek only parts for which they're suited, and saves countless applications for non-existent jobs.
Casting directors might therefore be expected to co-operate, and those in commercial enterprises do. But companies with big Arts Council subsidies (e.g. the National, RSC and Royal Court) don't want to know, any more than they want to know actors and agents—well accustomed to a red-tape runaround from their casting directors, who rarely answer calls.
"Once they have the security of a salary paid from public funds," says Craig-Raymond, "they become remote from the public with whom they are supposed to be most concerned; that is, actors—the same aloofness for which the BBC is notorious."
Those who think the arts exempt from the general rule that public money is featherbedding on which bureaucracy breeds will want to believe that PCR is wrong. But I sadly suspect he is right.
Wait lifted
After his troubles during the summer in getting Eugene Dodeigne's sculptures through Customs, Mr David Talbot Rice of the Buckingham Gallery told the art critics that he intended to keep the stuff on show until Christmas or until they came and reviewed it. Alas, Godot himself could take tips from art critics on keeping a man waiting. If more than one or two showed up at the Buckingham, they kept quiet about it — but the Dodeignes are gone.
Between times
Mr Harold Pinter would probably be happy enough to see A Midsummer Night's Dream disappear from the Royal Shakespeare Company's repertory for a while (at least, when he went to see it, he left at the interval), but he is peeved at the six-week absence of his own play, Old Times, from the Aldwych. Two of those weeks, of course, are given over to a special season of Much Ado About Nothing; the others just happen to coincide with Old Times star Dorothy Tutin's matinee month as Peter Pan at the Coliseum. " Sheer coincidence," insists the RSC spokesman, denying any suggestion that they would think of victimising Pinter to save wear and tear on Miss Tutin.
In case Pinter should be unconvinced and is wondering what happens to Old Times when Peter Pon goes on tour, I have good news for him — and bad news for Stratford, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Miss Tutin will not, repeat not, be going with it.
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